


LD50

by we_built_the_shadows_here



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, M/M, Marauders' Era, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Potions, Spy Severus Snape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2019-10-07 03:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17357999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/we_built_the_shadows_here/pseuds/we_built_the_shadows_here
Summary: In scientific parlance, an LD50 is an amount of a substance that constitutes a lethal dose for fifty percent of the tested population. Everything from poisons to common medications in your cabinet right now has an LD50.It’s 1981, and the walls are closing in. There is a spy in the Order. Lily, James, and infant Harry Potter are in hiding but not safe under Fidelius yet. Severus Snape is not a trusted enough Death Eater to pass on crucial information, and Dumbledore still doubts Snape's loyalty. Peter Pettigrew is chewing at the walls where no one can see. And poison persists in the blood.





	1. January 3 1981: Belladonna

Knockturn Alley is full of furtive movement and mutterings even though it is thirty minutes until the newly-imposed curfew and bitterly cold. It is the first Saturday in 1981, and the street has well-hidden inlets and outlets; the people flow through like a river. No one wants to catch the ire of the Aurors who are, even now, certainly watching. Most of the legal transactions still have the sly movements of the illicit; most of the illicit transactions have the easy grace of a carefree conversation. Everyone’s head is covered in hats, scarves, hoods both to stave off the cold and to disguise identity.

That's how Severus hides: hood pulled high, collar turned up against the chill, stubbled chin and telltale nose hidden behind a lumpy wool scarf. It’s cold enough to warrant it. He’s looking at a fogged window at an assortment of cursed books, watching one drag itself to and fro past the others--the one that shakes, the one bound in human skin, the one whose gently shifting cover pattern could hypnotize if you weren’t careful. 

The books are a pretense; his real focus is the reflection in the window of the people as they move up and down the street. He straightens when he sees his target: a bright yellow scarf, catching the dim streetlamps in the snowy gloom, strolling slowly down the alley. He jerks his head as the yellow scarf walks past, tugging his own collar tighter, making sure the tiny brass star pin--his own marker for his partner, nicked from a pawn shop--is exposed. He turns, and they fall in stride, looking straight ahead.

“You’re late,” Severus mutters.

“You’ll wait if you need it,” he drawls. “For your little haemophiliac customer, you said? Sad story.” He sounds as if he’s heard about a dozen of them today and gives credence to none. “It’s five galleons, now. Do you have the money?”

“Yes,” Severus huffs, the word making a puff of mist in the cold air. He had hoped for a discount, with the whole cloth tragedy of a sick child woven in, but clearly struck out. Perhaps the man was raising his prices to charge for the lie, as well.

What they are doing is not precisely  _ illegal _ , which is why the item is not delivered by one and the payment taken by another to thwart law enforcement. But this transaction is also not entirely above-board. Were a Ministry official to inquire after it, certainly no tax would be paid, and Severus knows for a fact that the brewer would not be certified. There are a number of reasons not to be certified, though; one could be unable to find a Master to apprentice to, or one could be a registered werewolf or vampire or half-breed of some description, or one could simply lack the galleons.

Even galleons themselves are muffled where Severus holds them between his fingers, and the flagon of potion is swaddled in dirty canvas. They pass hand to hand with ease, and Severus takes the vial easily even though nerves have his fingers shaking. He’s bought ingredients from the black market like this, but never a finished potion before, and it feels less like a transaction between fellow professionals and more fully illegal, which means more frightening, with the Aurors permitted to attack with Unforgivables first and interrogate later.

But there’s more he’s supposed to get, more than just the vial. “Your supplier--” he starts.

But his companion has already turned to go into a dimly lit shop door. The shopkeeper greets the man with a thin smile and the door shuts behind them both, and Severus fights the urge to look after, to look around at all. Looking around is worse than walking alone, but his heart is still pounding. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, through his teeth, so it doesn’t make a huge puff of steam; it was clumsy to ask like that, clumsy to pry so openly at the supply chain when he’d only just won the dealer’s trust enough to sell. He has to keep his gait even, step by step, soles slipping on the icy cobblestones. Well, half of Dumbledore’s task was to get blood replenisher. He has blood replenisher. The other half--meet with his new contact and begin some kind of work with them in person--will be more painless. It has to be.

Near the end of the alley he slips into a doorway and, spine rigid with the effort it takes to not glance backwards, he disapparates. 

The designated place Dumbledore had indicated is not so far as it might be; he makes two stopovers before coming to rest along the foggy, moonlit street. He walks five long blocks, takes two  left turns, and crosses a street to ensure he isn't being followed despite the fact that there is no body in the darkness trailing him, no footsteps in his ear to betray a follower. It helps calm him, and it is perhaps the only spycraft that he'd managed to think of on his own that wasn’t entirely lifted from a pulp novel. His heels are muffled on the sidewalk by snow and charm, and his dark cloak sucks in the light. He feels like a shadow, and is comforted by the thought.

The dingy, dim muggle lane with its dirty shutters and spindly trees comes to an end and there, in the dimmest corner, is the address he was given. One light is on in an upstairs room. Up the stairs to the door, and Severus pauses at the threshold, tugs his hood closer to his cheeks, and knocks.

The door opens of its own accord. Charmed, it must be. Or a trap. He could walk away. It would be safer. Severus thinks of the light upstairs. They must have heard. Might have opened the door using their own wand. It could be an Auror ambush, or a Death Eater ambush, or an Order ambush from those who embraced the more brutal methods Dumbledore claimed to not endorse.

Severus has scrounged in the dirt for as much information as he could for Dumbledore for over a year: it was, all of it, thin, barely sufficient, little of it actionable. Then, on new year’s eve, an owl carrying Dumbledore’s sprawling script:  _ Acquire a blood replenisher potion and meet your new contact, I have an assignment uniquely suited to your skills. This is your opportunity to gain my trust-- _ and the date, time, and location, this anonymous, run-down home. He had barely managed to find someone who would sell him the blood replenisher in time for the meeting.

Severus decides that he wants Dumbledore’s trust. It’s the only hope he has of surviving this. He strides across the threshold and shuts the door behind him, throwing the bolt.

Warm light is pouring down the stairs in shattered shapes, carved by a banister, but no light is on in the first room, a parlor with an arm-chair and a fireplace. Dimly through a doorway he can make out a kitchen. He waits to hear someone call or speak, but no one does. When no one appears, he whispers, “Hominem revelio.”

His senses expend for a swooping moment and--yes, someone is upstairs in the lit room. He begins slowly moving toward the stair. A floorboard creaks beneath him and he pauses, briefly.

Someone is humming. The tune is half-familiar, half-remembered, something from the Muggle radio from a long time ago.

Two more steps. Only one room is illuminated, the one he saw from the street, half a bookcase and a desk visible behind the banister. No person. Two more steps, and still nothing. Three more, and he’s at the landing. Four more--

A door with no light behind him flies open and there’s a wand stuck in the back of his neck. “Don’t try anything,” a woman’s voice demands. “Were you followed?”

Snape's head turns slowly. Something very odd is happening in his gut. The seller’s voice had been an intentional cipher, but this one, that voice is-- “Do I know you?”

She scoffs, then. “I said, were you followed?”

“I wasn’t followed,” he says. He could shoot a hex over his shoulder, could sweep her legs out from beneath her, could run. But this is about trust. “I have what Dumbledore asked of me.”

“All right.” The pressure comes off the back of his neck. “You can turn around.”

He very nearly doesn’t want to. He stares for a single, flat moment into the opposite room, lit so well, and curses himself for being tricked, for having a secret, for defecting to Dumbledore, for being so damn predictable.

Then he turns. 

There she is: red hair, green eyes, anger, and the reason Dumbledore hadn't told him the name of the handler who would meet him. “You,” he says, pushing all the loathing he has for himself into his tone. “Dumbledore didn't say--”

“Dumbledore didn't say because you wouldn't have come,” Lily Potter says. “Frankly I wouldn't have believed it myself if you weren't standing here.”

He had begged--on his  _ fucking knees _ in front of the old man--for her life, this exact woman’s life, almost a year ago. Dumbledore had taken the defection and assigned it a price: information. He had paid it, over and over again, through a Protean charmed quill and through the Auror Bones and, very rarely, Dumbledore himself. Too much obvious, direct contact was dangerous to Severus himself. Dumbledore cared at least that much for his life. 

He had wondered, briefly, if it was meant to be an Auror sting to lock him up. While gray market potioneering could lose his certification if it happened too many times, it wouldn’t put him in Azkaban, it wasn’t really any more illegal than the woman selling homemade pasties by the train station, and Dumbledore had far worse against him.

Far worse that was now standing before him. Severus spits on the floor at her feet.

Lily wrinkles her nose and glared down at the little wet patch on the carpet, then returns to glaring at his face. “Are you done?”

“I'm not working with you,” he says hotly.

“Fine,” Lily says. “I told Dumbledore you we're better suited to Azkaban anyway, when he gave me this assignment. Glad to know I'm right.”

The idea that  _ she _ didn’t want to work with  _ him-- _ that she had been  _ assigned _ when all of this had been to protect her--and her prophecied son and her dreadful husband--that she might be  _ right _ \-- “Is that what you think,” he hisses, stepping closer.  He has grown since the last time they had stood so close together. He has also learned many things, learned to use his voice better than just to shout, learned to imply violence instead of just reach for the blunt tool first when anger flared, learned to be quick and smart and keep a level head in a fight, which maybe this was shaping up to become. He could look down his long nose at her, eyes narrowed in disdain, thinking  _ you’re nothing to me _ and make it plain on his face without saying a word. He keeps his tone just barely level through sheer force of will. “You know what I am, then. Perhaps you should think twice before threatening me.”

Her wand must be up her sleeve, the way her finger twitches, as if considering bringing it to her hand. “I don’t think you’re going to hurt me,” she says, voice tight but even.

“The Dark Lord has murdered mothers before, witch.”

“I know he has. I don’t think  _ you _ are going to hurt me.” Her eyes are fixed on his, even, open, brow knitting back together, but not in anger--in frustration, as if he were being particularly dense. She pushes past him, toward the light. “Come on. Let’s sit in the study. Don’t touch anything. This is the house of a Muggle on holiday so I’d ask you not to make me stage a break-in for him.”

He could leave. He could leave, right now, throw the swaddled potion down a sewer grate, disapparate, go home, get blind stinking drunk and go to sleep on the couch. He could do it right now and likely wouldn’t even suffer for it. Dumbledore wasn’t the kind to punish, not the way the Dark Lord is.

He follows her into the study. She takes the seat at the desk. There is a fat floral armchair that Severus would rather set on fire than sit in, so he stays standing.

“Our assignment,” he says, with all the disdain he can muster.

“Yes. Right.” She pulls a piece of thumbed parchment out of her pocket and sets it on the desk.“You’ve got your Mastery and certification, you’re probably brewing, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “There is an artificial shortage in medicinal potions ingredients, Ministry’s throttling imports and increasing hunting down home-herbologists growing ingredients. And there’s an all-time low of potions masters.” Her eyes go narrow and sharp, as if daring him to say anything about why she isn’t one--the marriage, the baby, her blood status and the fact that most potions masters would hesitate even in peacetime to take on a mudblood.

Severus is glaring at the window, at his own reflection and hers. He flicks his fingers at Lily as if he doesn’t care, gesturing in a loop. “Get on with it.”

Her hand on the desk becomes a momentary fist, but then she goes on. “The biggest pinch is blood-replenisher. Even St Mungo's is feeling pinched on that one. The only place that can reliably stock medical potions is the black market and the prices--”

“You owe me five galleons, by the way,” he interrupts.

“Five?” She looks shocked. “Last week the going rate was three.”

“I suppose they aren’t giving me the new customer discount that they offer to Order members,” Severus says bitterly.

“Not to slimy bastards like you, anyway,” she retorts.

He moves to the door. “Tell Dumbledore--”

“Oh, hell, sit  _ down _ Sev.” She passes a hand across her brow. “I’m sorry, all right. That was uncalled for. You did what we asked.” And then she starts digging in her pocket. “I don’t think I have five. I only brought what I needed. I’ve got a few quid--”

“It’s fine,” he says harshly from the doorway. He can’t exactly afford all five of the galleons but he’s not about to beg for two. There is enough rice in the cupboard, he won’t starve. 

She produces three coins and places them in a neat little stack on the desk, as if asking him to come back in. He does. They’re warm to the touch when his hand covers them--the warmth of her body, he realizes uncomfortably. He inspects one. It’s so bright, it must be fresh from the bank, but the mint date is 1716.

Potter gold, then, minted and then put in a bank. That, too, he swallows, and shoves the gold into his pocket. He can feel her watching him and tries not to allow the ugly flush that he knows is creeping up his stubbled neck to reach his cheeks. 

“Anyway,” she says, clearing her throat and reverting her gaze to the well-thumbed note. “Fully half the potions the Order managed to source have turned up tampered with or outright poisoned. And they were poisoned really well, even I had trouble when I went through our stores.”

That  _ is _ interesting. Some Death Eaters had died of tampered black market potions, and they suffered the same difficulties the Order had. Detecting the tampering was a feat in itself, Severus knew firsthand. “And you want me to inspect further? Follow up your work?”

“No,” she says. “Dumbledore wants us to trace the tampering back to their source. Figure out who’s doing it, and why. Maybe even stop them, if we can.”

“I would sooner suggest you stop taking medical potions,” he snaps, rattled by the ambition of the task--and the word  _ us. _ Himself  _ and _ her, working together; not the occasional report, but real work.  Low risk spy work compared to the passing of information that he had already done--that would get him killed, this could be played off--but still valuable or he wouldn't be doing it. But then again, he had never been a spy before. His forearm itches, at that thought. He doesn’t reach for it.

“People are dying, Severus,” she says, deadly serious. “We can’t trust anything but charms and you know well as I do that potions are better for the worst of it. People are dying and will keep dying and you and I are the best brewers the Order has. This is our assignment. Do you accept it or do I have to tell Dumbledore that I’m working alone?”

He resents that. It’s not as if he had a choice regardless. “Your first sample, then,” he says stiffly, dropping the cloth-wrapped vial before her on the desk.  “I take it you will require more?”


	2. January 4 1981: Lead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t actually know if the floor plan I’m laying out here is realistic for a tenement of this era or in this location, but I reached a point in cursory research where I really didn’t care. If you are a scholar of tenements and slums of the 1960s to 1990s midlands UK, I absolutely invite you to correct me about what I’ve got wrong but I’m not one of those so I’m going to have some things wrong and I’m at ease with that.
> 
> Author's edit: After making this comment, some very kind folks dropped a whole lot of knowledge in the reviews on ffn! I've tweaked this chapter slightly to make it more historically / architecturally accurate.

Severus doesn’t like his childhood home in dull Muggle Cokeworth. It’s too far from everything, too shameful and too attached to his own filthy Muggle heritage. He had grown to appreciate how secret it was over the years since he had graduated Hogwarts, though. He paid for a postbox for Muggle affairs and took on an owl-receiving service in London which forwarded to the postbox, rendering the address completely unconnected to anything the Ministry could find easily. If he did not like the place, he did like its anonymity. 

The factory had left Cokeworth shortly before Tobias had left life, both during Severus’ fifth year at school. With the factory gone, more and more of the shabby little two-up-two-downs had gone unoccupied, and when the landlord had offered purchase of the house to Eileen for cheap enough, she had scraped together what she could--the last of her meager inheritance, what she had saved from being on the the Muggle dole, and what galleons she had kept aside to be converted in emergency. Eileen had spent the next few thin and bitter years alone in the home she had bought while Severus finished Hogwarts, took on his Potions Mastery, and began the Dark Lord’s work.

Eileen Snape was found dead by a neighbor on Christmas Day, 1979. Heart trouble, the Muggles had said. He had shed some private, sloppy tears and thought that would be the end of the whole thing, the beginning of his freedom from Cokeworth.

And then a letter had found its way to him saying that the house was, by rights, his.

His first instinct was to burn the place to the ground and have done. But it did have value, and he was loath to discard it so callously. It could be a useful headquarters for the Dark Lord’s work, more spacious than the flats others took on, and it came free of charge. Much as he might loathe it, he wasn’t a fool or so proud to turn that down. 

He moved in. Severus wouldn’t bring Avery or Mulciber here, to be sure, but Narcissa has smiled thinly and called it  _ charming _ when she came, as if it were a getaway cabin in the woods or some kind of novelty dollhouse. 

Lucius hadn’t said anything about it when he had come across the threshold, being somewhat seriously injured at the time from an operation that had become an attempted sting; the pair of Aurors had faired the worse of it, barely. But no one would come looking in Muggle Cokeworth for someone bearing curse wounds that would prove out their participation on the fight. 

That has been almost a year ago and the Malfoys hadn’t come back since, and hadn’t publicized the location. It was still secret enough. But Narcissa had discreetly sent a gift or two there: a thick soft bathrobe for Christmas, a basket of fragrant roses in summer, a bottle of wine for a favor, a card for Draco’s baby shower. Every time she sent something, he was reminded that it  _ was _ secret enough, that it  _ could be _ useful--but in its current state, a decaying Muggle wreck, it was not enough. It was too Muggle, too small, too old, and not suited for the new life he wished to forge.

The walls were what he changed first, patching the dents of life and Tobias Snape. The paper became something less faded, something that didn’t spark bad memories, something that looked not entirely unlike the paper in Lucius’ study, though it lacked the gamboling pixies etched in gilt. Then Severus became practical; if he was to use the house for anything, it must be sufficiently modern. He couldn’t change the neighborhood or too much of its size, but he could add amenities: a tiny water closet with shower into the larger bedroom, installed without extension charms and draining into the Muggle sewer system in a mostly-Muggle fashion. His own old, cramped bedroom became a kind of a guest room and miniature hospital, with cheap but sturdy laminate floor that could be easily sanitized--the kind of thing he wished for as a teenager whilst dissecting worms and frogs, or when Lucius had been there last February bleeding out on the carpet. Then he took the larger bedroom for himself and replaced the skinny bed that Eileen Snape had died in with something a bit nicer. And then, that summer, he had begun the true work: the laboratory in the cellar.

Eileen Snape had never been certified as a brewer by the Potions Master’s Guild. She had gotten by brewing illicitly; Severus had known that for as long as he could remember and still sometimes took the practice on when things became too lean. Tobias Snape’s cheque evaporated the moment it crossed his palm, and so Eileen had done what needed to be done to feed a hungry young boy and herself and, on occasion, her husband. Tobias would rage that the whole house belonged to him, as if he were proud of the shabby little two-bedroom, the cramped kitchen, the living room with its worn floorboards and no indoor plumbing. But the cellar, a dirt-floored chamber reached from a narrow stair--that belonged to Eileen. Like everything else in the house, it was shabby. But in Severus’ memory, it was the only place that was magical.

The vials were cobwebbed when he opened it. Residue dried in the bottom of some beakers; he knew his mother’s systems well enough to put on dragonhide gloves for the ingredients that could still be active. A mouse had gotten into the feverfew. Spiders had taken up residence along the door. Doxies had made riotous nests in the smaller cauldrons. A malformed skeleton of something dead and mammalian laid in the largest cauldron, fur matted to the bones. Between brewing to survive and brewing for the Dark Lord and feeding information to Dumbledore through an intermediary, there hadn’t been time to do much more than clear a cramped station for one, enough space to brew the money-making potions that he survived on.

If he is to work with Lily, Severus knows, that will have to change. There would have to be space for two cauldrons; three, if he is being honest, and four is not out of the question. Lily would despise the mess; she would sneeze and wrinkle her nose and scoff at the filth and the very image of such an enraging thing sends him cleaning with such fury that smoke plumes from every scrubbing charm he casts.

Which is how Dumbledore finds him, the day after his conversation with Lily: covered in years of cobwebby dust and soot, sluicing water through the largest and most stubborn cauldrons for the third time. The man hadn’t even bothered to knock at the front door or send an owl. The charms don’t even trip; the only thing that alerts him to the man’s presence is the creak of a floorboard, and Severus is twitching with nerves and ready to curse anyone out of his way at the bottom of the stair when Dumbledore opens the door. 

“Good afternoon, Severus,” Dumbledore says, descending the stair without hesitation, like a king.

And Severus knows then why he’s come. He curses under his breath, stuffs his wand back into his pocket, and returns to the sink.  “Lily Potter,” Severus snarls into the cauldron. “You want me to work with  _ Lily Potter. _ ”

“I do.”

“I refuse.”

“I very much doubt that.”

Severus lets the cauldrons clatter into the sink so that he can face the man, who even now looks as though he is withholding his amusement. “She is meant to be protected!”

“I thought you would appreciate that I did not trust her protection to anyone else.”

Severus gestures widely, furiously, at the space around him. “This work is not safe. If this conspiracy to restrict supply and poison blood-replenisher goes as far as you think seem to think it does--”

“It goes much further than that,” Dumbledore says, and he moves closer, stirring the dirt with his robes. “Do you know why blood replenisher is in such high demand of late, Severus?”

Severus makes a slashing motion, batting aside the question. “I will not work with her. I would work with--anyone. Anyone else. Not her.”

Dumbledore’s face goes stern, for a moment. “Sirius Black, then? Or the werewolf Remus Lupin? Or perhaps the Auror, Alastor Moody? You would prefer one of those?” 

_ “Anyone.” _

Dumbledore watches Severus’ face, and the sternness goes out of him with a sigh. “I rather thought you would be pleased. No--” He can see Severus itching to interrupt, indignant as he is, and Dumbledore lifts a palm to forestall him. “You have been diligent and honest with me. You have passed vital information these past months, information that has saved lives. You have played your part as a double-agent well thus far. I merely thought to show you the reason for all of your efforts, to allow you to rekindle the friendship you hold so dear.”

“We will accomplish nothing together,” Severus spits. “She despises me.”

“And what do you feel for her, I wonder?”

Severus looks away, to the dust settling around Dumbledore’s shoes, the cobweb caught on his hem, to the scuffed and patched leather on his own feet.

“Ah,” Dumbledore says. “Still?”

Severus turns from the old man, crouching to lift the cauldrons again and set them scrubbing themselves once more in the sink. It will take at least one more round to truly get them clean enough to brew in. The plume of smoke from the charm he casts is so violent that it has flames at its center.

“It is not a failing to love someone, Severus,” Dumbledore says, gentle as a friend, which he most certainly isn’t. “It is perhaps the best thing you have done. Does she know?”

Severus lets his silence answer. He moves further back into the darkness of the cellar, beginning to pluck sticky vials from the disused shelves.

Dumbledore follows, lighting his wand and holding it aloft--fooling himself into believing he is helping. “Do you intend to tell her?”

_ “No.” _ The word comes out ugly, uneven, and more than a little desperate.

“Very well.” Dumbledore nods along, as though he is being gracious. “You have not considered my question. Do you know why blood replenisher is in such high demand as of late?”

Severus vanishes a rack of cracked vials that could have taken repair, and the rack goes with them. He curses under his breath. “You know very well I don’t. You’ve had me scrounging for scraps at Lucius Malfoy’s table instead.”

“So I have. And not to no end, I would have you know. But--very well, then,” Dumbledore says. His brusque, professional tone is at least better than the kindness. The kindness makes Severus want to vomit. “There is a new curse very much in vogue with your Death Eater colleagues. I believe you are familiar with it.  _ Sectumsempra?” _

Severus starts so violently that the fragile blown glass distillation sphere shatters in his hand. Blood wells on his fingertip. “How did you know about that?”

“You were developing it while you were at school,” Dumbledore chides, sounding indulgent. “You were a Death Eater in waiting, and you were unusually talented, and you developed a powerful curse that proved quite difficult to heal. I would be a poor headmaster indeed if I had not made note of it when it entered the Hospital Wing on James Potter’s face, that May when you cast it against him.” Dumbledore looks at Severus appraisingly. “Without a wand, even, it is an impressive curse.”

“I only showed it to a few,” Severus protests, pressing his thumb against his sliced finger and vanishing the rest of the shattered sphere. “Mulciber, Avery, Malfoy--” 

And the Dark Lord. It was Dark, and impressive, and entirely his. Or it had been. 

Of course the Dark Lord hadn’t merely been impressed by it. Of course it had been another tool for  _ his _ use.

Dumbledore watches the comprehension dawn across his face. “It is quite the favorite, I’m afraid. Quick, efficient, not enough to kill but enough to maim. If the victim does not receive immediate attention, they are likely to die.” Dumbledore watches him, lit by his wand. “It causes severe bleeding, and the wound does not close of its own accord.”

The logic of it snaps into place. It’s elegant, really. Implementing a spell that caused uncontrollable bleeding would make blood replenisher in high demand. Then, throttling supply and poisoning the rest created pressure from the other end. Severus could see the irony all the way back to the Dark Lord himself. It always came down to blood with him. Why not make it come down to blood for everyone else as well? “The Dark Lord doesn’t spill magical blood without reason,” Severus says numbly.

“I’m sure that is what he’s told everyone. And thus far only a few have died of it. It has simply stoked fear and consumed viable supply, which I believe to be at least a portion of his real purpose in this tactic. Attacking Muggles this way, in particular, makes more work for the Obliviators and St Mungos, both of which have quite a lot to handle already with the giant uprisings and the werewolves on the offensive. I have suspicions of the other reasons he has employed this gambit, but they are only suspicions.” Dumbledore searches Severus’ face again, and then adds. “I’m sure the Dark Lord and his devotees will find another curse to overuse once blood replenisher is abundant once more. Curses fall in and out of favor, Severus.”

“I do not need to be consoled,” Severus says, scowling. “I don’t mourn Muggles or Aurors.”

“We should still regret the things our weapons do, whether we intended the use or not.” Dumbledore plucks a roll of parchment from his robes. “I would like you to work on a countercurse, if you have the time, but it is of smaller consequence than the other task I have set you. How much time will you require to be ready for your work with Lily Potter?”

Severus looks around the room. It will take some time to make it clean enough to experiment in, and more to acquire enough samples to meaningfully experiment upon. He still wants to say  _ never _ . “Two weeks. And more galleons--prices are on the rise. I wouldn’t be surprised if they double before the month is out.”

“You shall have both. The latter delivered to you by Lily Potter, courtesy of the Potter family vaults. He is aware of his wife’s work with you and wishes to help any way he can.” Dumbledore offers the sheaf of parchment. “This is some measure of research, as well, which may assist you in tracing the brewer who is poisoning their product. I must admit I do suspect a Dark wizard with links to the Ministry, which points to your Death Eater friends.”

“It’s not us,” Severus mutters sulkily, taking the roll of parchment. “Death Eaters have been poisoned as well. The Dark Lord blames one of your lot.”

“Severus,” Dumbledore admonishes. “You  _ are _ one of my lot.”

-

Peter Pettigrew feels as though he’s been sitting here for a hundred years even though it can’t have been more than an hour in this waiting room. Somehow his heart is still hammering in his throat even though his nerves should have passed well into boredom by now. 

The waiting room is sterile, clean and empty and white, and it feels like even jiggling his leg in the chair is a giveaway. Instead, he leans his elbows on his knees and inspects the carpet inch by methodical inch. Peter figures he knows that stretch of carpet pretty well by now. Could probably ace a test at this rate. Twenty minutes ago the last of his compatriots--an elderly dark-skinned woman--had been called back, leaving him alone to speculate all the ways in which Aurors could bust in and haul him to Azkaban.

“Jeffrey Milton?”

The name takes a moment to sink in. He’s wearing glasses--Jeffrey Milton’s glasses, which he’d borrowed right off the Muggle’s face but allowed to slide down his own Transfigured nose so he could inspect the carpet. The Muggle was about Peter’s height, a little heavier around the middle, and wouldn’t miss the glasses since the real Jeffrey Milton was sleeping peacefully in his armchair in front of the television. 

Peter pushes the glasses up his nose even though they make the world wobbly. It’s part of the disguise. He has to keep the disguise up even though Peter feels like he’s going to vomit all over his carpet. He knows every inch of the carpet so it must be  _ his _ now, and he’s going to sick up the cold fish and chips he’d nicked from Jeffrey Milton’s fridge all over it. He’s going to sick up Jeffrey Milton’s fish and chips through Jeffrey Milton’s mouth and probably get some on Jeffrey Milton’s rumpled shirt in Jeffrey Milton’s doctor’s office and then get found out for a fraud and get murdered.

_ \--No. _ That’s the one thing he isn’t going to do, get murdered. It might be the only thing he isn’t going to do. Peter swallows heavily and, finally, looks up and offers a weak little wave.

“And what brings you in this afternoon?” the nurse asks, not looking up from her clipboard.

“Uh,” Peter squeaks, or tries to, standing and pulling his shirt nervously down over Jeffrey Milton’s paunch as he does. Peter gestures weakly to his--Jeffrey Milton’s--sagging throat.

The nurse looks up. “Ah. No voice?”

Peter nods vigorously.

“So sorry to hear that,” she says in a tone that tells Peter she’s seen people who are doing worse today and ready to go off her shift. “Well, follow me.”

What follows is a simple series of Muggle medical machinations, ones Peter remembered from his Muggle childhood with his Muggle mother. The nurse prods him like a side of beef when he’s in the examination room, clucking half to herself and securing the cuff around his arm:  _ blood pressure’s gone a bit too high, but you are getting older, it’s to be expected-- _ he steps on the scale and thrusts a hand in his pocket to grab his wand-- _ weight’s down a bit though so that’s good-- _ he steps off the scale and tries to hide the motion of removing his wand from his pocket-- _ deep breath now-- _ she’s behind his back and the spell comes to his mouth almost unbidden.

“Imperio.”

Her hand is still in his shirt, and the cold of the stethoscope just barely kisses his skin, but she’s gone perfectly still.

“Stand--stand up straight,” Peter says, clearing his throat. He still does sound like himself, damn it all. If only he’d managed to lay hands on some Polyjuice. But he was rubbish at Potions and it was done now, and done well enough so far. He digs into his jacket pocket. “Take this.”

From his hand, the nurse plucks the parcel. Wrapped in newsprint, the little round stoppered bottle doesn’t look like much. Based on what the Dark Lord had said, though--

Peter doesn’t want to think about the Dark Lord or what he said or what’s beyond that cork. Peter wants to get the hell out of here and never think about this place or what he’s doing ever again. Peter wants to this to be over with.

“One drop,” he says dully, stuffing his hands back into his pockets once more and picking out a piece of linoleum tile to inspect. “In every bag of blood you can find, until the vial is empty. You--be careful. Don’t get caught.” He waits for a moment, and then hurriedly adds, “And I--I was never here. I missed my appointment. Jeffrey Milton, he canceled his appointment, said he felt better.” He looks up again. “You got that?”

She nods mechanically and places the bottle in her own pocket.

“Good. That’s--that’s good.” Peter nods vigorously. “I’ll see myself out.”

_ Warn mum _ goes on Peter’s list as he walks out of the doors, out of the hospital, back to the train station that will take him back to Jeffrey Milton’s home.  _ Warn mum to stay away from the hospitals for now. And Gran, too. Dad and his family would go to St Mungos, but mum-- _ no, Peter resolves, if his mother were in a car wreck or something, if she needed blood, Peter would handle it himself, the  _ right _ way, with magic.

Muggle medicine wasn’t safe even at the best of times, Peter told himself. He wasn’t doing much of anything at all, then, just--making the odds a little worse. He removes Jeffrey Milton’s glasses from his face and tucks them in his pocket. No, he decides. He hadn’t done anything at all.


	3. January 22 1981: Mercury

Dumbledore’s papers made things clearer, but much more complicated. The fact that supply of blood replenisher is throttled is indisputable, and registered openly in new Ministry regulations on importing a key ingredient: unfertilized maidenhair tree seed. Pomona Sprout’s clean block print in Dumbledore’s papers expands on the core of the problem. Summed up, it maintains that there hadn’t been a reliable source of unfertilized maidenhair tree seed for some time and attempts to cultivate the tree locally are slow to bear fruit as they grow on the timeline of a tree and not a war. The fertilized seed of maidenhair, ginko to the Muggles, makes a subpar potion at best and an inert one at worst; other replacements, Severus knows, could render the finished potion toxic when brewed by the inexperienced. Severus could work with the necessary substitutions, perhaps; Lily could as well, but there is altogether too much bleeding going on for them to brew all the necessary potion and accomplish anything else. It would be a waste of time, and easily undermined. 

Instead, Dumbledore would have them seek the source of the problem together.

It actually takes three weeks and more than two hundred additional galleons from the Potter vault for Severus to get a real sampling of blood replenisher, despite his estimate to Dumbledore. The galleons, mercifully, end up in his account via banking transfer done in unseen rooms by anonymous goblins and assorted intermediaries, which means he doesn’t have to  _ see _ her. They weigh heavy in his pocket when he withdraws them, and he spends them as fast as he can. 

Severus sources indiscriminately, from everywhere he can think of, any variant he can think of, from any _ one _ he can think of--semi-illicit potions from a variety of dealers and retailers, mostly, but also expired potion nicked from the Ministry’s Safe Magical Disposal unit with the help of a Ministry contact; expensive and certified varieties from the specialty potion shops that sell bespoke medicine to those suffering from rare curses; standard specimens from correspondence with other certified brewers working in their various labs; the apprentice’s brew from those foreign brewers, marked with a gaudy dancing red  _ A _ and the words  _ for testing only, _ which no one has ever heeded; and more from mail-in distributors from as far as South Africa. He does all this while still making and selling enough standard certified potions to feed himself, making an attempt to develop a countercurse for his own childhood curse, and making poisons for the Dark Lord himself to keep his loyalties clear.

This grim gray winter morning, the fruits of this labor are being decanted into vials racked neatly on a table when the charms on the door trip with a friendly little chime. This, too, had been arranged. He pulls off his dragonhide gloves and pulls the goggles back from his face. The knowledge of  _ who _ waits on the doorstep makes his gut lurch. Standing before the door, he suddenly wishes he weren’t in a grubby rubber apron stained with more than a few failed experiments, that his trousers weren’t so worn at the knees, that the thick lumpy black sweater to keep away the chill of winter didn’t have moth-holes on one side and scorch-marks at the cuffs.

He grits his teeth and swings the door open. “You’re late,” Severus says to the woman standing on the threshold.

She’s a bit taller, which makes her trousers expose more ankle than she might mean to; she must be cold. Her hair is a close-cropped brown, and the eyes match. The face is thin and long and the nose a little crooked. There’s nothing of the woman he knows this one to be; it’s Polyjuice, then. She must have waited for hours to find such a good match to her build so she wouldn’t have to change her clothes.

But the familiar glare and new look of distaste on her face makes her identity plain. “Hardly.”

He shuts the door behind her as she strides past him into the home. She’s familiar enough with it to know. “It’s very nearly ten-fifteen.”

“I have a baby, Severus. There were things I couldn’t leave undone before leaving.” The voice is all wrong, too. It’s not Lily except how she betrays it in every movement, in every expression. She puts her purse down on one of the tabletops and strikes a pose, arms akimbo. “The cellar, then, is where we’ll do the testing?”

“If you know you are going to be late, you should leave earlier.”

She turns her face toward him. “Is this how you’re going to start this project? You’re going to get things going while sniping at me like Petunia?”

Severus absolutely does not want to be compared to Lily Potter’s prissy snide muggle sister. “Perhaps your sister has a point,” he snaps.

Her mouth goes tight, as if she’s about to spit some kind of venom right back at him, and he sees it flash across her face: the million cruel things she could say, like  _ this is why you don’t have real friends anymore, not even the murderers, _ or  _ I knew you’d be like this, did you know it’s not even that your body repulses me, it’s this bit, the bit where you have to be right, _ or  _ I know you can’t even stand to think of me when you’re having a wank, you’ve got to use that Muggle filth from the corner shop with its dogeared collection of women with feathered hair and glossed mouths gaping like hooked fish _ . 

Then she looks away and brings her hand up to her face, as if to push away hair that isn’t there. The motion leaves her hand fluttering lamely at her brow. “I’m sorry I’m late. I’m sorry to have wasted your time. Your time is just as important as mine, and I know you’ve got things to do. I dropped Harry with my parents and my mum wouldn’t let me leave without sitting down for a cup of tea. You know how she is.” She looks as if she wishes she hadn’t said the last--too much bad history, there--and lets her hand fall to her arm, crossing them. “I’m  _ sorry _ . It won’t happen again.”

He watches her face, where her mouth is still twisted and stiff, like the words had pained her even witha  stranger’s voice. Severus hates it. He hates her apology, hates her reasons for her apology, hates her reasons for being late, hates how greedy he wants to be with her time already when all he can do is snarl at her like some kind of rabid animal, hates that he can’t stand to think of her mother without wanting to shatter a glass.

A younger version of him might have done it; might have shattered everything from the test tubes to the windows to get her out. But it occurs to Severus that this woman before him likely doesn’t even know that  _ his _ mother is dead. She might not even know Tobias is dead. It’s not as if they lived in the same area of town, and he stopped inviting her well before they stopped speaking.

She looks like someone else. And she knows less about Severus than she thinks. Perhaps she can be managed easily, like someone else, like the unwelcome stranger she is. 

“We have enough to do,” he says. “I trust you brought an apron and gloves? You can scrub vials and prepare testing solution.” He walks past her and descends the stair to return to what he had been doing before she had arrived, which was numbering and labelling the latest additions to the collection. The counters are clear and scrubbed clean, if not unstained, and there is a ledger prepared with acquision notes on each potion. 

He could have set a charm to do the scrubbing up, and filling vials with testing solution is apprentice work at the most. He can feel her eyes on his back. It’s not an apology, and he’s expecting her to be angry, which will let  _ him _ be angry, which will let them fight and let him throw her out and let him work this problem alone. He can satisfy Dumbledore’s demand on his own, he’s sure of it. She could storm out the front door right now without even disturbing the work.

A few footsteps, and the floorboard creaks as she approaches the narrow stair. From the top, patience barely holding on, she says, “Fine.” 

If she can stand him, then he can stand her, he thinks, and his resolve goes steely.

The first hour is able to be borne mostly in silence. She kicks off her boots at the bottom of the stair despite the dirty floor, muttering something about  _ pinching my damn toes _ . She has to keep pulling at her trousers, as well--the woman whose face Lily has chosen to wear must have smaller hips than Lily herself, and eventually she makes a noise of frustration and cinches her belt two notches tighter.

But she finishes the preparations he assigned quickly enough. When she presents him with two racks with twenty-four vials, each filled perfectly with testing solution, there’s nothing for him to nitpick. Even the corks are even, as if they were cut there.

So instead, he turns to her, and runs his eyes over her transformed body once more. “How much longer, like this?”

She looks down to her own feet with their new blisters on the smallest toe, lips pursed in chagrin. “Half an hour, maybe less. I took the train to get here and then had to walk, I wasn’t sure how long it would take. I have another dose to get me home but only just.”

Which is fine. He doesn’t even know why he’s asked in the first place. It’s not as if he wants to actually see her real face. He flicks open his ledger, two pages allotted to each of the twenty-four samples, each already with a paragraph on its procurement. “You can prepare slides from our samples. Slides are in the drawer. I’ll test in the vials you prepared and take notes.”

“I can take notes, my handwriting is better than yours.”

“No.”

She looks up sharply. “Why not?”

“Because this is  _ my home. _ And what should I tell my  _ Death Eater friends, _ ” he snaps, “if one of them were to stumble across this ledger? I can wave off the research, but the handwriting?”

Annoyance wrestles with alarm on her face. “Do  _ they _ know about this house?”

“A few.”

“Who?”

“That isn’t of your concern.”

“If I’m going to be here, looking like Lily Mudblood Potter, it  _ is, _ ” she snaps, folding her arms.

“Then don’t look like her when you’re here,” he retorts. 

“I don’t have enough Polyjuice for that. It’s not as if they’re giving it our for free at the apothecaries and the ingredients are nearly as expensive to buy myself these days, since I don’t have a Mastery to give me license to buy half of them.” She looks up at the door. Worry is winning. “Do they just--turn up unannounced?”

This is an opening, he knows. If he truly wants her to leave, he could just say  _ yes _ and she could go. He could be done and demonstrate how much he can accomplish alone and perhaps wash his hands of her entirely.

His jaw works. “No,” he admits. “Never.”

He shouldn’t enjoy the way relief of that word takes tension from her shoulders, but he does. “I bet this neighborhood makes them uncomfortable,” she mutters, still looking at the door at the dop of the stair. “It’s very--Cokeworth.”

He supposes she means both  _ very Muggle _ and  _ very poor _ and cannot disagree with either. It doesn’t endear her to him.

But the displeasure at both must show on his face, and when she looks back at him she uncrosses her arms and sighs. “All right. You take notes. I’ll prepare the slides.”

They fall once more into a rhythm, at least, if not the easy companionship of their old potions partnership from so long ago. It’s quicker, Severus must admit, working with two; her bending over the magiscope and him simultaneously dripping droplets of potion into each of her prepared vials and sketching out notes in his sloppy script. The work goes fast. And before long, Severus and Lily both are too engrossed in the work to snipe at one another with any real venom.

A pattern emerges in the samples, too, as they work. Many of the potions Severus obtained tested weak and dilute and poorly-made, which was to be expected when sourcing so indiscriminately. What was less expected was the virulent toxicity that ran through the sampling. Some of it was clear incompetence or poor and contaminated ingredients interacting to result in toxic potion--opportunists seeking advantage over a slow market, in other words--but the others? No brewer could get so much right and then go so wrong.

“This one’s like the others,” Lily says, fiddling with the dial on the magiscope. “Which was that, twenty-three? It looks the same as twelve and four.”

“You said the same of eighteen,” Severus says, and he lets a droplet of it drip into the testing vial. The sample gives one quick pulse of green light in the testing solution: lethal. “Two of those samples are from my initial source, but the others are from different dealers.” Then the drop solidifies and falls to the bottom of the vial, which means--a number of other, different things, potentially. Fewer things, when combined with the other qualitative results. But nothing terribly illuminating yet beyond the fact that it’s poisonous. That was the trouble with most of the standard testing methodologies. Most of them tested for toxicity, as the safety of medical potions was always paramount, and those tests give results in a way that obscured more interesting information beyond the fact of lethality.

“I’d bet it’s the same brewer, though,” Lily muses. She lifts her eye from the magiscope and looks at him through the stranger’s face, a face he’s almost grown to tolerate. “The standard ingredient’s the same as half the others, you can look but the refractive index is identical, so it’s got to be the same batch or one hell of a coincidence.” She tilts her head and pulls at the longer lock of hair next to her ear, and all illusion that she could be anyone but Lily Potter disappears. “Do we have samples of the standard stockists to compare to? I can bring Borage’s recipe and Slughorn’s variant on Borage but I probably shouldn’t go and fetch anything from the shops--”

He doesn’t want to hear why she can’t go to the shops; he knows it better than she does. “I can get the common premixes--Goldworth, Twopenny, and Bilging’s.”

“I have some Goldworth in my cupboard, I think, so you can skip that. I haven’t done a refractive index in a bit, but I’d bet you that nobody’s looks like this.” Lily takes a step back from the magiscope. “You should still see for yourself. And look at the dice on the maidenhair, it’s like some of the others, not a replacement. It’s--weird.”

Severus crowds closer to peer close at the slide. She isn’t wrong. The dice is distinctive at this magnification, strange and on the bias. And the standard ingredient was clearly homebrewed, and clearly distinct. Most apothecaries sought to keep their standard ingredient  _ standard _ , and their refractive index close to water. This was much higher, and somehow was creating dispersion as well. 

When he lifts his eye from the magiscope, he notices with a slow-growing dread that her disguise is now in the process of wearing off. He stiffens, straightening his spine next to her.

“What’s the next step, then?” Which is another way of asking  _ what are my orders _ because that’s what she is: his contact, the one giving the orders, and he the one receiving them.

She tugs on the lock of hair next to her ear again. It’s too short for her to keep a hold of it how she used to prefer to and she has to keep reaching. “We find the source. Find who’s poisoning the potion and stop them,” she says, eyeing him with one green eye and one brown. As he watches, the hair she has between her fingertips gets longer and longer, and the other eye goes green. “Obviously.”

Which is an insult. They had worked so well together when they didn’t have to look each other in the eye. “That isn’t as simple as it sounds. Hasn’t Dumbledore has fed you a plan to trace the brewer?”

She snorts, turning back to the slide and removing it from her magiscope. “That isn’t how Dumbledore operates. Where are those samples from?”

Severus could write a treatise on  _ how Dumbledore operates _ but instead he attacks the problem. “Twelve and eleven were obtained through dealers, ones pointed to me by fellow Death Eaters.”

Her back goes stiff at that, and she looks briefly over her shoulder at him, brow furrowed. She doesn’t like it. Good.

“Eighteen was stock from the private store of the Rosiers, but they seemed to want to have it tested first, which is what I’m doing here, as a favor to them. Four was from St Mungos disposed stock. The one you’re looking at now is from a mail-in service.” Her eyes light up, but he waves her hope away with irritation. “There will be a relay, some kind of intermediary. They will have thought about being traced by owl. Elsewise they would have been caught by now.”

“But they took the money,” she insists. “It has to go somewhere.”

“They won’t put it directly into a vault with a name on it. There will be an exchange.”

“Okay. All right.” She starts to pace. He should offer her dittany for her toe before she leaves; her boots will fit wrong again when she does. “The dealers, then. Do you have anything identifying? Any names?”

Severus snorts. “A hundred for each and all of them false.”

“But they do  _ have _ names,” she presses, tapping a finger to her mouth and looking into the middle distance. She on to something, but he doesn’t quite know what, not yet. “Names, and homes that the Ministry would know about, places we could track them down.”

“Presumably, yes, they did not spring to life without a name,” Severus says drily. “And they largely do not smell like they’ve slept in a gutter.”

She focuses back on him for a moment, and then seems to come to some kind of decision. “A map,” Lily says. “We’d have to lay the groundwork but James could do it, if he was careful.”

Severus finds his mouth full of bitter bile. “A map wouldn’t tell us any names or home addresses.”

“It could,” she says, and a smile of mischief is on her face despite how he must be scowling. “It could tell us everyone’s real name, even if they were invisible or Transfigured or an Animagus.”

Severus frowns, trying to think of how it could be done. There were ways, of course, but the  _ names-- _ “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

She waves it away. “You wouldn’t have. But once we have their names, we can dig into the Ministry--Moody can help us there--find a home address, start following them, follow where they’re getting the Potion. Eleven and twelve, those are from two separate dealers? Dealers who met you in Knockturn?”

“They are,” he says. “But how could a map--”

“Leave that to me and James.” She smiles brilliantly, as if he isn’t scowling at her at all. “It’s been done before. Hell, it’s been done at a place a lot bigger and a lot more secret than Knockturn Alley. You’ll see. Trust me.”


	4. January 22 1981: Dioxin

Peter has been standing on the doorstep for fifteen minutes, trying to deliberate a way he can get out of this visit when he hears footsteps rapidly approaching behind him.

This is it, he knows. This is the end. They know, and they’re here to take him. If he’s lucky the Aurors will use Unforgivables and it will be quick--

“Hey there, Peter,” Lily Potter says, reaching a hand to his shoulder. “Awfully late for a visit. Can I show you in?”

“What?” he says, which is the best he can do under the circumstances. 

“Did you stuff up your ears with snow? You’re on my doorstep. You’re here for a visit with James, right?”

“Right,” Peter says. “Yes. I just--had to catch my breath.”

She appraises him. “Rough Apparition?”

“Yeah,” he says, looking down and rubbing the back of his neck. “Seems like they’re all rough these days.”

She snorts, a puff of white smoke in the cold dark air. “Well, we’ll get some Ogden in you, that’ll warm you right up.” Lily removes a keyring from her pocket and fits a key in the door, hustling Peter into the bright and warm living room of the cottage.

“Lily, is that you?” James calls down from somewhere upstairs.

“Yeah,” she shouts back, at a volume that makes Peter wince. “I brought a guest. Peter’s come round.”

“Peter!” James calls back over the squall of an infant. “Be down in a minute, I’m just finishing up changing Harry.”

Harry. Somewhere deep in Peter there is the hissing, high laugh of the Dark Lord, echoing still. He had tried not to remember the name of the infant consigned to death, but it had stuck the first time he heard it and never left. Peter shivers.

“I know,” she says, shucking off her jacket and reaching for his to hang on the hooks on the wall. “James keeps it too cold in here. I’ll go get that drink, I’ll pour us both one.”

“Just a finger,” he calls after her. “I can’t stay long.”

“Two if only to keep you around a bit longer, James is bored stiff being grounded like this,” she says airily, leaving the kitchen door swinging behind her. 

Which leaves Peter left alone in the parlor, hands in his pockets, looking at the floor.

The cat--a large tabby tomcat that had grown colossally from the ball-of-fluff Lily’s sister had given her on her graduation--stalks over toward him and shoulders into his shin. The cat circles, tail pointing straight up, eyes big and green and not exactly nice.

“What do you want?” he mutters, trying to nudge the cat away from his black trousers with a toe and failing. “I haven’t got anything for you. I had roast beef for lunch, is that it?”

Peter’s never understood how to interact with pets. They always seem to need something, or want something. Cats in particular--well, as a rat he’d had enough close encounters with cats at school that he knew better than to trust them. He reaches down to try to brush his fingers against the back of the cat, maybe to grab its tail and pull it away, but it whirls on his hand and takes a swipe before darting under the couch.

He’s nervous, and even the cat can smell it on him. It must show just as clearly on his face as the cat fur on his trousers that he can’t pick off fast enough.  _ This is just a social visit, _ Peter reminds himself, which is a lie. But tell yourself the lie you intend to tell, and then it will be easier to make others believe it. Rookwood had told him that. Rookwood is in the Ministry and relays orders, when their real master couldn’t be bothered with Peter. It is always a relief to have tea with Rookwood than to face the gaunt, red-eyed face of the Dark Lord, whose fingerprints Peter can still feel on the inside of his skull.

He’s here to begin the slow and steady process of chipping away at his friends. The Dark Lord wants the infant Harry very badly for no reason Peter can discern, since he’s just a baby and about as interesting as an ugly bald puppy. The Dark Lord had explained that there was a charm, a very powerful charm that was going to be performed on the house in Godric’s Hollow, and-- _ Shatter the bonds between them all, _ he hissed, grasping Peter by the jaw.  _ Make sure you are the secret-keeper. _

Lily emerges from the kitchen, holding three glasses pinched between her fingers and the bottle in her other fist. The bottle goes on the table, along with one glass--for James, Peter guesses. She lifts the second glass toward him.

“Thanks,” Peter says, taking a hasty and sloppy sip.

She takes a draw on her glass, pinkie out and watching his face. “So what’s got you all worked up?” she asks.

“Just something I’m working on,” he says, shaking his head and walking past her to the couch. “A charm.”

Rookwood explained the rest much more kindly, over tea. The Fidelius charm, it was called, was the surest way to keep the Potters safe, and surely Dumbledore would be considering it. The charm was performed on a location, and the secret-keeper was a person who--and this was crucial--did not belong to the location. You couldn’t lock a cabinet with the key inside, Rookwood explained, mixing sugar into his tea. So it was with the Fidelius charm. The secret of the place was inside of the person, and a thing could not be hidden inside of itself. The secret-keeper could come and go as they please but they could not hide forever inside of the secret location without weakening and eventually breaking the charm. So Peter was to make sure, when Dumbledore did the charm, that Peter alone would be the secret-keeper; the key to unlock the house for Voldemort.

Peter pointed out--to Rookwood, not the Dark Lord--that Lily and James and even the infant Harry did leave the cottage on occasion. They’d be easy to attack, if the Dark Lord could muster enough followers quickly enough to get past the escort and the inevitable reinforcements and any charms or wards on the house or their person. It isn’t a bad idea, Rookwood explained kindly, but it isn’t enough. Killing the child isn’t the only thing; killing the child could wait months or years, even, as the Dark Lord grew his power and moved for position against the slow, cautious Ministry and the hodgepodge Order led by Dumbledore and his trust. No, this operation is to show the Dark Lord’s power; that even Dumbledore’s most treasured disciples in their most private place under the tightest protections could not be safe. That no one was safe, and it was better to ally yourself with the only power that mattered.

“After all,” Rookwood had said, smiling kindly. “Isn’t that why you’re here, Peter?” 

And it was.

“Anything I can help with?” Lily asks gamely, taking a sip of her own glass--with only one finger of whiskey in it, he notes, to his two. He really must look like shit. 

“Not unless you want to die,” he says, and the joke comes out a little shrill, a little sideways, a little too real. He rubs a hand over his face to hide it. “All the test subject have died,” he clarifies into his palm. “Rats, I’ve been using rats.”

Marlene was disgusted, when he mentioned that a lot of his charmwork would be tested on rats. Lily just looks intrigued. “What’s it supposed to do?”

What it’s  _ supposed _ to do is be made up. What it’s supposed to do is keep Lily busy until he can talk to James properly. After talking to Rookwood, Peter put the rest of his task against the Fidelius together himself. If James and Lily had to choose someone to keep their secret, someone they trusted, it would be Sirius, Remus, or Peter himself. If he were being completely honest, probably not himself. He has been forced to be honest with himself, lately, about so many things. The Dark Lord had made a lot of things much clearer, and so many other things so much more complicated. And to be the secret-keeper, Peter has to do exactly as the Dark Lord said. Shatter the bonds. Discredit Remus and Sirius such that the only option--the only safety--was Peter himself.

The Dark Lord was right. He was always right. And he was the only power that mattered. So it’s just a social visit. Not with people he had consigned to death. Just a social visit with friends. “It’s complicated and I don’t think it’s going to work,” Peter deflects.

Lily’s getting that annoyed look, now, that impatient and irritated little flat mouth that Peter always found so ugly and frightening-- _ how _ could James be so head over tail for someone who could make a face like that, like you were chewing gum stuck to her shoe? He wishes she would say something to absolve him of the clumsy lie, some way out of this conversation, but she just looks at him over the edge of her glass like she’d enjoy giving him a verbal thrashing. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, a traitorous little voice in the back of his mind whispers, to be the reason for  _ her _ death.

Before the silence between them gets really excruciating, though, James finally descends, creeping like some pantomime cat-burglar. “We’ll have to keep quiet,” James says in a stage whisper.

Peter tries not to sigh too audibly in his relief.  “Oh?”

“I put Harry to bed,” James elaborates, rounding the banister and joining Peter on the couch.   _ I put Harry to bed _ , like  _ put to sleep, _ which is a kind way of killing a pet. It sounds almost nice. Peter would like to get more sleep. “If you wake him up she’ll have my head.”

“I’ll have more than that,” Lily says, and Peter laughs too loudly, and James shushes him.

Peter slugs back the drink without meaning to while James describes his day with the infant Harry to Lily, who laughs low, and Peter, who provides the occasional chuckle and revolted sound effect. Lily pours for Peter again and Peter can finally feel the muscle in his back relaxing and lets himself laugh at James describing the sounds that almost sound like spells and the teeth-marks on his wand. James is half out of his chair, gesturing wildly in lieu of volume--a trick he had pulled in the Gryffindor boys dormitory as well--pulling faces for the two members of his appreciative audience. This is normal. It’s a social visit. It’s how it always was. James and Lily are in danger, but Dumbledore is watching out for them, and look at them, they’re laughing, they’re in love. There is a war on, but Peter was their trusted friend.

Is. Is their trusted friend, not  _ was. _ The pain in his back returns, he can feel it seize.

“What’s wrong?” James asks, looking bemused that Peter suddenly isn’t laughing along to some story about the baby and cat vomit and a misplaced pacifier.

“It’s nothing,” Peter says quickly.

“You’re a rubbish liar, Pete. Did Marlene kick you to the curb?”

Marlene is going to be killed. Probably soon. He’d given a lot of information on her, and tried to get more on whatever it was she was working on. That’s what the whole affair had been about and he had bolloxed it up completely, which he suffered for. “I haven’t seen her since just after Halloween. No, it’s--worse.”

James and Lily share the inscrutable glance that only lovers can, that visible but impossible cipher of communication.

“Peter,” Lily says, gentle as a mother, which she is, Peter tries to forget but she  _ is _ , “Does this have to do with the Order?”

“Not exactly,” Peter says. And, summoning up all his fear, which he does feel, all the uncertainty, all the rattish twitching nerves inside of him and the rattling hiss of the Dark Lord’s laugh beneath it all, he whispers into his glass. “It’s Sirius.”

“Has something happened?” James asks, with an urgency that makes Peter’s lungs seize.

“No, nothing’s--nothing’s happened, exactly.” He looks up at their faces. They both look disturbed, concerned,  _ too much, _ and the first thing that comes to mind comes out of his mouth. “Dumbledore made me promise not to say anything about it.”

“Then you shouldn’t tell,” Lily says, fast and sure.

“Lily,” James admonishes.

“Do you not trust Dumbledore?” she demands, and it sounds like an old argument tread once more, time and time again.

“You know I do.”

“Then if he told Peter not to tell--”

“Lily, Peter’s  _ worried _ and it’s about Sirius!” James isn’t shouting, exactly, his volume isn’t anywhere near enough to wake the baby, but his voice has gone up, his thighs are tense, his hand is on his leg like he’s sport-ready to spring to his feet.

Peter’s face is still pointed to the bottom for the bottom of his glass, watching his hand warp beneath the whiskey as he slowly rotates the tumbler around in his hand. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “You’re right, Lily, I shouldn’t have said anything.” 

Maybe if he tells the Dark Lord he won’t do it, he’ll just die quick. That might be easier. And he won’t have to watch. 

Then he remembers Benjy Fenwick, and knows it won’t be quick at all.

“Is that what’s really wrong, Peter?” Lily asks, with a stiff, motherly kindness. “This--thing that Dumbledore’s told you not to talk about?”

Which is exactly an opening he might have wished for. “Yes.”

She puts her glass down on the coffee table. Her eyes flick to Peter, but they’re dismissive, unempathetic, all the kindness gone. She looks as though she’s about to talk James down, her mouth is open in a reasonable and flat shape that will birth words that will make James respect the fictional wishes of a fictional Dumbledore and stymie Peter’s plan entirely.

And then a wail goes up from upstairs, and her mouth goes shut.

James half comes to his feet, but Lily puts out one repressive palm. They exchange another look, communicating more than Peter can read before she speaks--and it must be for his benefit that she speaks. Some kind of decision has been made in the air between them. “I’ll get him,” Lily says, pushing James back down with a hand to his shoulder. “It’s all right. I haven’t seen him in hours.” She disappears up the stairs and the wailing trails away into the fussy sounds of a baby receiving what it wants.

James watches the stair for a moment, listening to his wife comfort the child. Then he turns back to Peter, face grave. “Out with it.”

Peter downs the rest of the whiskey before he speaks--too fast, it burns and he stifles a cough. Whiskey in his lungs, he puts the empty glass down on the table. “He’s--I don’t even know. It isn’t anything.” Peter wrings his hands fretfully, staring at the bottom of his empty glass. It’s real. The nerves are real. The fretting is real. He may as well show it. It’s not a social visit and it never was. “I told Dumbledore I heard something strange. He told me to leave it. I know you'd--he told me you were trying to do that charm, the protection charm, but you needed a person to keep the secret.”

“That’s why we came here after Harry was born,” James says. “The Fidelius charm, it’s called. I didn’t know Dumbledore told you about it.”

“He didn’t,” Peter says. “I mean, not exactly. I just figured it out. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s why you came here instead of your parent’s, right?”

James nods, looking up at the ceiling. “This is Dumbledore’s cottage so it was easier for him to protect and it’ll be easier to get a charm that strong to take root.”

Peter looks around the room, almost worried the real Dumbledore will emerge from a doorway and rip the skin from his face to reveal the Death Eater mask beneath. Peter edges closer, whispering, “But there’s a secret-keeper. A person who can tell. They can’t live here. They’re--a key, kind of. Right?”

James is still looking at the ceiling. When he nods, his gaze settles back on Peter. It’s not a kind look, or a friendly one.

“That person--if you chose the wrong person as your secret-keeper, they could sell you out. All of you. Not just you, but--Lily.” Peter swallows, and his whiskey-roughed throat burns again. “Harry. You’d all be at their mercy if you chose wrong.”

“Peter, what are you saying?”

There’s danger, here. He has to be careful. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. I told Dumbledore what I heard, what I thought, and he told me to leave it but I can’t just ignore--”

“Peter, what did you hear?”

Peter brings a knuckle to his mouth, wanting to chew on it, but he might chew straight through it. “I think it’s--he had a brother in there, you know. He was one of them.”

“Disowned,” James says, waving a hand as if Peter’s just a fly. “You know how Sirius was with his family--”

“I know that,” Peter hisses, edging closer toward James on his seat. “Don’t you think I know that? I was  _ there, _ remember? I saw how it was for him, same as you did. I remember. I  _ know _ , James. And Dumbledore knows all that too, he probably knows more about it than either of us do since he talked to Sirius’ parents--you remember when they tried to pull him out of school to get him back, Dumbledore fought that off. Probably more than once.”

“Then why do you think he might be the spy?” James demands in a hiss.

Peter flinches. He wants to draw his knees up to his chin, to make himself smaller, to become a rat. “There’s a spy,” he says, voice weak. “We know there’s a spy. Someone’s passing information. Benjy was working with Sirius and me, and we talked about it. Benjy got killed. Sirius got out.”

James interrupts, “Benjy made mistakes. Even Dumbledore said so.”

“He did.” It was too easy to trap Benjy Fenwick. He was a trusting sort, never called for backup, thought he could manage everything himself--like Sirius and James that way. The Dark Lord had wanted an experiment, wanted a live subject, wanted--it was horrible to watch. Peter still isn’t sure exactly what happened at the end. He’d rather not think about it. Sirius had been stunned out, ambushed, Peter dragged him to the bushes and woke him up and explained with real panic and terror what had transpired, only omitting his own role in it. “Sirius--he said something funny, after that.” He looks up, looking into James’ face, trying to find the belief he’s looking for. “Did they come to you?” Peter says. “Back before you and Lily got married. Did they?”

James is quiet a long moment. “It wasn’t like that,” he says finally.

It had been half a guess. But it’s one that has struck. “You’re married to a muggleborn. And they still came looking for you, trying to get you to join up with their lot.”

“Almost seemed like they wanted Lily too,” James says, and he’s on the defense, now, and giving information as he does it.

“Because she was top of our class, better at Potions and Charms than either of us,” Peter fills in.

A younger James might have muttered back  _ better than you, maybe, _ but this man before him isn’t that vain child anymore. “We turned them down flat. Both of us did. Got one of the ones who asked sent to Azkaban just on suspicion alone. And Sirius would have done the same, if they came after him.”

“That’s the thing that bothered me,” Peter says, reaching after the lead. “They came to you and Lily even though Lily’s muggleborn. But Sirius, last heir to the house of Black? They didn’t come to him? Not once, especially not after Regulus died?”

“You know how Sirius is. Didn’t exactly make a secret of his loyalties. They had their answer already.”

“Which is why--what he said after Benjy--that’s why it bothered me so much.” It’s the only bit he’d crafted carefully in advance, the best bit, because it’s half true. James is ready to hear it, Peter thinks. He’s considering it, and Peter’s stacked up the building blocks this final lie can rest on. “ _ Imagine how much James could get out of joining up _ , he said. He kept saying it, like he was jealous.  _ Keep Lily and Harry safe, take those targets off their backs. James could have joined up. James could have solved it for himself. _ Like--like he was angry you hadn’t, almost.” 

Sirius had said it bitterly, like he had been placing the blame for Benjy on James’ doorestp. Sirius had always been resentful of anything he thought he was being forced to do. He hadn’t wanted to take Benjy with them, looking for the last dead drop where Peter had left notes for Rookwood. Benjy had even found the knothole on the tree with a clever little spell that showed footprints. Peter had been sloppy, not covering his tracks.

Peter had resolved, watching Benjy scream, to stop being sloppy.

Peter shrugs. “It could be nothing. But there’s a spy. We know there’s a spy. We can’t pretend as though there isn’t. We have to look at everyone. That’s what Dumbledore said.”

“And Dumbledore told you to stop looking.”

“I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s  _ something. _ ”

James doesn’t say anything. He’s watching Peter as if he had unfolded a new set of arms and begun shuffling chocolate frog cards with them, and he’s trying to figure out where he had been keeping them under his shirt all this time. It’s not  _ trust _ , not exactly, but it’s also not outright dismissal either. Not like Dumbledore had.

“Or,” Peter goes on, voice hushed to a bare breath. “Or it isn't nothing. But are you willing to bet your life that it’s nothing? Lily’s life, too? Harry’s life?”

“I’m going to ask Dumbledore,” James says decisively. “First thing tomorrow. He’ll have to explain it to us and so will you.”

“Don’t,” Peter says, too urgently. “Please. He told me--it’s the  _ only _ thing he forbade me to do is tell you and I’m doing it because--I just--” He had told Dumbledore in hopes of cutting this inquiry off at the root. Dumbledore hadn’t  _ laughed _ , exactly, but Peter had been summarily dismissed. Dumbledore hadn’t so much as interrupted his paperwork to look him in the eye. “I just don’t  _ know _ and I can’t stand it. I was hoping you’d tell me I’m wrong, flat out, but you’re not.” Peter crushes his eyes shut and digs his thumbs into them. “It’s  _ Sirius. _ ” Sold and sold and sold, all of them.

The silence is long between them. The infant upstairs is burbling but not asleep yet and Peter counts seconds until he hears the long, thin breath he knows from James. 

“I can do this,” Peter whispers, half to himself. “I promise you, I can do this. I can get this right for you. Give me time. I’ll find something, and I hope it’s something else--that the spy is Moody or Bones or--”

James snorts. Moody and Bones are zealots, risking their careers and their necks. They lived in the fallout of Grindlewald’s war, though, and were willing to sacrifice. They knew the costs of war better than anyone else.

Peter keeps talking, low and precise as he can keep it. “If you pick the wrong person--if you make Sirius the secret-keeper and you’re wrong...”

“You’re wrong,” James says. He’s saying what Peter had asked, too late, but saying it. There is a seed of doubt, now. “It’s  _ Sirius. _ ”

“I know,” Peter mutters into his hands. “It might be nothing. I want it to be nothing. I want to throw up.” That last part, at least, is true.

“Try not to throw up on the carpet,” James says, trying some kind of hollow joke. “The carpet’s nice.”

They sit there in silence for long enough to hear the baby go quiet upstairs, to hear Lily move from the nursery to the bedroom and hear the pipes shudder in the walls as she turns on the tap upstairs.

Peter knows his eyes are red from digging his thumbs into them when he looks up. It’ll serve. “All I know for sure is that You-Know-Who is coming after you. You and Lily and Harry. Dumbledore asked me not to tell because he didn’t want to make you worry, you’ve got enough to manage as it is. But that’s what we’re up against, a spy who doesn’t care if your son dies.”  _ Me, _ Peter thinks.  _ It’s me and you don’t see it. You’ll be able to see it in Sirius. You will. You have to. _

“We?” James says, a ghost of a laugh on his mouth. “That’s what you’re up against? You’re to protect us?”

“Yes,” he lies, heavy as a shovelful of dirt on a grave. “I am.”


	5. January 31, 1981: Hemlock

Whatever it is that Lily has to make, it takes nine days. Then she shows up, unannounced, before eight in the bleeding morning, hammering on the door like the house is burning down.  It takes Severus five solid minutes to roll out of bed and stick his nose far enough out the window to assess the situation--it’s  _ her _ and she’s wearing that brown-haired muggle’s face, and he really does have to answer--and then a few more to curse the air blue and tug on yesterday’s trousers and a fresh shirt. Through the peephole in the door--she’s still hammering and smiling with someone else’s mouth, waving a newspaper with a piece of rolled parchment tucked haphazardly inside.

The door’s barely open and the latch barely undone when she pushes in past him to slap the newspaper down on the table, unfurling the parchment with a flourish. “It’s done,” she proclaims victoriously.

“What’s done,” Severus says, voice graveled and breath stale with the morning.

“The map,” she says, as if he’s being charmingly stupid. She pulls off her coat and drapes it over a chair. 

She intends to stay, then. He doesn’t slam the door; that could wake neighbors, if there still were any. But he does shut it with force.“What map.”

“The map I told you we were working on, the one of Knockturn Alley? The one that’ll give you the real names of whomever you’re meeting up with?” She spreads her hands across the blank parchment lovingly, as if it contains anything. “It’s not half so big as the other one, but there were separate buildings on this, and so many floors that didn’t line up right, so all the walls had to be handled separately. That part was tricky. I thought the hardest part would be getting it to know everyone’s names, but the Ministry takes care of that, though we’ve had to cross reference and Bones didn’t like it one bit. But when the place you’re pulling the names from actually  _ cooperates _ it’s not nearly so hard to do, so it’s done, and in record time.”

She’s babbling, but it’s not nonsense, though maybe not worth waking up this early for. He approaches the table. “Show me.”

She removes the wand from her sleeve with a flourish--she is in altogether too good of a mood--and raps the map with its tip, saying, “I solemnly swear I am spying for good.”

“That’s an idiotic password,” Severus says, watching the ink spread.

It is Knockturn Alley, though, line by line of walls and rooms and compartments above those rooms and hidden attic spaces and trapdoor cellars and corridors leading away underground that even Lucius probably didn’t know about. And all of it is peppered lightly with finely labelled dots, one moving fast up the lane, others pacing in circles around their apartments above their shops, some not moving at all. The bookshop is so strangely crowded with names, none of which he recognizes,  _ Olyphex Rigel _ overlapping  _ Hieronymous Tremont _ pushing up against curling Urdu script and Chinese characters and something that looks a little bit like Sumerian cuneiform in the corner, where the display case might be in the back for the truly rare artifacts.

He thrusts a finger at the grouping. “That can’t be right. The bookshop isn’t even open this early. Half of this isn’t even English.”

Lily purses her lips, excitement draining away in favor of some kind of nerves. “It’s right, sort of. They, um. The enchantments weren't as strong, in the other map. We were stronger, when we built this. It’s not intentional.”

Severus looks up from the cluster of names to glare at her. “What do you mean?”

Lily looks at where his finger is pressed to the map and then meets his eyes again, looking slightly revolted by what she’s about to say. “Our guess is that they’re the books bound in human skin.”

Severus lifts his finger gingerly, looking closer now, transfixed.  _ Esur Abboud _ slowly drags its way back and forth past  _ Gallican Ramsay _ \--the book in the window that moves, he realizes. Not a person at all, or not a person any more, not in any way that matters except to this map. Severus feels completely awake, now. “How could this piece of parchment possibly know their names? You said there was a source at the Ministry.”

She smooths a corner of the map and averts her eyes. “Not sure. Our guess is that there’s enough of the wizard’s magic left that the map can see it. The names for all the  _ living _ people come out of documentation that’s at the Ministry for everyone else, but--I’m not even sure how it’s figuring out the ones that wouldn’t be registered with the Ministry, we didn’t make it that smart, but it seems to be doing that on its own. Maybe it can recognize a pattern. ”

Any sensible person who knew what Severus knows about the magic that goes into such a thing would be screaming. This map is independently intelligent--an attribute some of the most cursed objects tend to have--let alone the fact that Lily doesn’t seem to know how or why it works the way it does despite making it herself. Which isn’t all that unusual, as far as creating powerful magical objects goes, but it is one of the primary signs of danger. Enchanted--and cursed--objects that manifest unforseen abilities are capricious at best. Whatever this map is, it’s unlike anything he's ever seen before. 

Which makes it, in its own enticing way, deeply beautiful.

Severus runs his fingers over the map again, looking and finding other names, sitting still in the basements or the attics or the corridors. Are they bones? Transfigured? The possibilities of such a tool, the  _ power _ \-- “How did you manage it? It must be a dozen spells woven together to make the map alone. The theory alone is incredibly high-level.”

“I didn’t.” Lily clears her throat and averts her eyes back to the map. “James did.”

Severus snatches his hands away as if burned. “Did he.”

She lifts her chin, defiant. “Him, yes, and Remus and Peter and Sirius. They made another map like this together, years ago. But James still had all the notes and half the technique in his head. I helped.”

“Charming.” Teeth bared. “So all of this was his idea, then? Spying on people with an enchanted map?”

“You loved the map until you heard it was his, and no, it was my idea, remember? We’re trying to catch someone poisoning potion, you have the contacts, finding names-- _ real _ names--will help us find who’s the source.”

Which is, really, honestly, truly meant to be the focus.  That's something he can cling to. “What, then?” he asks sharply. “I set up another meeting, purchase more potion, and we see who turns up and you dig out what you can on them? Or do you want to monitor the comings and goings of everyone who passes through the Alley?”

She squints at the map. “Both, when we can.” A dot labelled  _ Barnabas Webb _ toddles slowly around in an upstairs room, waking up, readying to open shop.

“Is this how Dumbledore operates? Just--lets his agents go around, creating incredibly dangerous items, who knows  _ what _ this thing is capable of--it might manifest intelligence, have you accounted for that?”

She folds her arms across her front and lets the map roll itself back up at the edges. “You have a lot of questions about how Dumbledore operates for someone who defected to him.”

“Perhaps that is because he expects a rather higher standard of  _ me _ than he does of  _ you. _ ”

She fills in the unspoken part without vindictiveness, though the flatly spoken words themselves have more than enough bite. “Because you’re a Death Eater.”

Which is both entirely the point and also entirely besides the point. “Yes. Because I’m a Death Eater.” It doesn’t come out half so fierce as he means it. He glares down at the map futilely, which is better than glaring to her face.

The silence stretches on before she makes a tiny, audible movement--again trying to push hair out of her face that isn’t there--and sighs. “He doesn’t just let us do anything we please. He’d rather I was sitting in the cottage with James right now, but I was losing it and wanted  _ something _ to do and James is a good dad on his own, he really is--”

“I don’t care what kind of father James Potter is.”

“Would it kill you,” she demands, “would it actually kill you to let me say something without interrupting or reminding me how much you hate my husband?”

“Yes,” he snarls.

“Get down on the floor and die, then!” She unfolds both hands with a flourish, as if she’s cleared a dying-place just for him on the sagging, creaky floorboards between them. “Get to it! If I’m so bloody insufferable, then you had best start dying now and get it over with!”

Which does, truly, finally, reach the edge of his tolerance for theatrics--both from himself and from her. “That will move your little war closer to won, will it?”

“It’s more your war than it is mine,” she snaps. “You're the one who had a choice. I didn't.” 

“You could have lived a life of ease on a bed of Potter gold,” he sneers. “This war is yours. Unlike you, I got swept up--”

“Oh, yes, you got  _ swept up, _ ” she declares, voice with with scorn. “Barely your fault at all, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t matter whose  _ fault _ any of this is.”

“If you didn’t have a choice, then why defect?”

Which stops him cold. “What?”

“If you didn’t have a choice you would have stayed where you were, where it’s  _ safe _ ,” she says. She begins harsh but it ends petulant, almost, as if she expects--no,  _ deserves _ more. “I've been perfectly polite not prying, not asking  _ why _ you came over to our side, but it makes you very difficult to trust, Severus.”

The idea of safety is laughable, but to say so would invite pity. No. And the  _ reason _ why he defected--absolutely not. Severus manages to reply, “I got swept up. I got in over my head. I didn't have a choice.”

“You--” Lily heaves a breath and then another, jaw still tight and tone closely managed. She wants to continue the argument, he can see it, but he can also see her doing something he’s never watched her do before--relent. “You’re right. Blame doesn't matter. I'm in it and so are you and that’s all that matters.” She thrusts a finger into the map. “Tell me where and tell me when and I’ll be watching from the cottage. I have enough Polyjuice in my system to get me home.”

It's exactly what he wants right up til he gets it. A lot of things are like that. “You shouldn’t have this map on your person. It’ll expose our work if you’re caught and searched and we have no idea if it could set off alarms or detectors.”

Lily lifts her wand, taps the map, and enunciates, “Managed.” The ink seems to run back up into her wand, and she gives him a challenging glare. “Acceptable?”

“Hardly. A dedicated wizard could crack it.”

She rolls it up with stiff, angry movements. “A dedicated wizard would have to know what to look for. To anyone else, it’s blank parchment.”

“Not to a Sneakoscope it’s not.”

“Ah, yes, the infamous lot of  _ illicit potions dealers _ who carry around  _ sneakoscopes. _ Call themselves the Alarm Constantly Going Off And Never Stopping gang.”

“ _ Aurors _ carry sneakoscopes and could easily find cause to search a Death Eater like  _ me. _ ” Or you, he thinks. And if you got the right Auror you’d be fine, but the wrong Auror, one in the pocket of the Dark Lord or even one sympathetic to the cause--

She throws up her hands and lets the parchment unroll. “Fine. I’m an idiot and I shouldn’t have tried. What’s your brilliant idea to catch them, then? Ask the potions very nicely who made them?”

He doesn’t have one. He’s not a housewife with hours and hours of leisure on his hands; he has other work to do, including the Dark Lord’s work--Rosier had sent some kind of  _ fluid _ by owl with no explanation and the only demand being  _ he said to test it _ and there was no question who  _ he _ was. Severus makes a gruff noise under his breath and scrubs his fingers over his eyes. “Fine. Keep it.”

She makes a victorious little sound, a sound he knows from having lost plenty of fights to her years ago, and rerolls the parchment again.

He continues, not wanting her to gloat.  “But we need a better way to meet and exchange information. You can’t keep coming here if we don’t have to use the laboratory. This place isn't a safe house, the Malfoys know about it, maybe others too. Or you could be followed, you’re a target even if you’re disguised--or someone else could make another one of this brilliant little  _ map _ of yours--and if it’s discovered I’m meeting with  _ you, _ I’m as good as dead.” He crosses his arms and looks at the far wall. “I’d likely give up inconvenient information before I went as well, if you were followed by a Death Eater with half a brain.”

He’s thinking of how else they can meet when she says, “Sev,” in a surprised and saddened little voice that rivets his gaze back to hers. Even wearing the other woman’s face, it’s a familiar look of shock. 

No--worse, it’s pity. “It won't be a problem if you remember that I'm supposed to be your enemy,” he snaps. “Members of the Order of the Phoenix don’t frequent the home of their enemies, and Polyjuice isn’t foolproof.”

She lets her gaze linger for another moment, and then shrugs. “All right,” she says, leaning forward to re-roll the parchment once more. “I mean, I just assumed that--well, it doesn’t matter.”

“Spit it out,” Severus says.

“I thought you’d be safer than that, with--them.”

_ Them _ can only mean Death Eaters, those he has betrayed. He squints at her. “Why would I be?”

She looks uncomfortable. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it past the Malfoys to give you up, they’re vile, but I thought at least Mulciber wouldn’t roll over on you. Unless you  _ really _ got nasty when he broke up with you.”

Severus is left gawping, mouth open. “Unless I  _ what? _ ”

“You were sixteen, no one is subtle at sixteen. I wasn’t,” she says, snapping the band closed around the map and tucking it back into her purse. She’s not looking him in the face. In fact, she’s flushing.

Severus’ mind has gone blank. “I am  _ not _ \--” There is no decent word for it. He stands there choking on the idea.

“What, a queer?” Her face is pointed, incredulous. Now that it’s out in the open she clearly intends to defend the idea. “It’s the eighties, Sev, it’s fine. I’m not bothered about it.”

Severus’ vision goes white. There had been--something--not anything he had even let himself think about outside of dim hallways or beyond drawn curtains very late at night, but he had been sure, painstakingly so, that it had been secret, and Mulciber had nothing to gain and had never said anything, nothing that made its way back to Severus, at any rate--

“I just hoped he would be nicer to you if you were, you know--something more than friends, even if it was a long time ago. Maybe even you could trust him. If not, you’re just all alone with them, and that--it sounds horrible.” She shrugs, trying to look unbothered as Severus pales more.

“Is that what you think of me,” he says. It wavers. It’s a mess. He sounds like a petulant child.

“It’s--I mean, shouldn’t I?” She looks confused, squinting, like the stranger she is. “It’s not a bad thing.”

She doesn’t know the first fucking thing about him and Mulciber, bad or otherwise. “Is that what they told you about me? That I was some kind of--”

“You  _ are _ , though,” she says, spreading her hands. Suddenly the fact that she’s a stranger makes it worse, makes the face accusatory, destabilizing, universal. “You’re not--half the wizards I know aren’t exactly on the straight and narrow and--I mean--you never went in for any girls I saw.”

He doesn’t say  _ you you you you you you you  _ until his throat screams raw. He bites off a lie from the cinderblock: “That you saw.”

“That’s--all right, fine,  _ that I saw _ .” She looks fiercer, now, clinging to her point. “But you did have something going with Mulciber, maybe no one else knew but I knew, the way you looked at him even after you and I stopped talking--”

“You don’t know the first thing,” Severus says, and he steps in close, voice low and carefully modulated so it doesn’t rise to a scream or a roar, “You don’t know the first  _ fucking _ thing.”

She doesn't have the decency to even look frightened, just disappointed, heavy-lidded eyes looking up into his. “Fine. I didn't see anything, I don’t know anything, I won’t whisper the slightest bit of it to anyone, and I'll go now before you start shouting. Is your telephone hooked up?”

She's pointing, behind him, to the telephone balanced on a bookshelf. There's a jar of beetles in front of it.

“No,” he snaps. He's furious and there's nowhere for it to go. He wants to hang her upside down in the air by her heel and see how she likes feeling so exposed.

She's shrugging on her coat again. “Get it hooked up. You're right, I shouldn't be coming here so often, it's risky even Polyjuiced like this. But I got Dumbledore to get us a connection to the Muggle telephone network so I could call my mum and Tuney. You can ring me when you have a sale arranged and let me know the details.” She takes a biro from her pocket and a scrap of parchment from a shelf and scribbles down numbers. “Call whenever you like. Harry doesn't keep regular hours yet so you're just as like to wake him and us at two in the afternoon as two in the morning.”

She extends the piece of parchment to him. He doesn't take it. His hands are still in fists at his sides and he's not exactly sure how to unwind them.

“Fine,” she says, exasperated. She drops the parchment on the table. “Don't mess this up just because you're angry with me because I knew about your boyfriend, all right? I've been angry with you since nineteen seventy five but I've managed to keep it together this far.”

“Angry over what,” he asks, voice replete with contempt. “Did I call you a name once and you haven't forgiven me?”

Her first anger was frustration, a flush of messy emotion. This is deeper than that, a closed-off, ancient kind of rage that is perfectly still and cold as ice.“If you had just called me a mudblood in front of half the school I could have forgiven you, and you know that.”

“No,” he drawls, happy to have landed a barb, happy to have his feet back beneath him. “As I recall it was my  _ boyfriend _ that was your problem. Unless you have some other grievance?”

Her eyes flash. “I’ll be sure to make a list for you. I can’t decide if I’ll start with the bit where you’re such an insufferable shit you kept making excuses for people using dark magic--the kind of magic that made people suffer--because you admired them for being able to do it, or go straight to the part where you  _ chose _ to join up with a group hellbent on murdering everyone like me.” She marches to the door, not bothering to button her coat, but stops and spins on him with her hand on the doorknob. “Unless mudbloods don't get to have grievances now? Or haven't they passed that law yet? You'll have to ask your good friend Lucius Malfoy to speed it up, I do still have a  _ few _ rights left.”

She does slam the door when she goes. A dog starts up barking. Severus stands there until his fists relax of their own accord.

And then, of course, he regrets it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't try to drag your former best friend out of the closet, kids, it won't go well


	6. February 6, 1981: Foxglove

The phone is hooked up. It took three Confundus charms, a stack of forged paperwork, and more quid than Severus wants to change from gleaming Potter gold, but it’s done. The line is under the name Sebastian Prince, a deceased great-grandfather, and will go unlisted. The meet for another purchase is made for this evening, just after dark in not two hour’s time. Severus has put this off as long as possible. 

He still pours a healthy measure of gutter gin into a cloudy tumbler to steel himself for it.

The line rings, and then rings, and then rings, and he is stuck in a mild buzzing panic that he’ll have to leave some kind of message until--

“Hello?”

It’s not Lily. Which means it’s the  _ other _ resident of the cottage--the one out of nappies, anyway _. _

“I’d like to speak with Lily,” Severus says, clearing his throat.

Suspicion spikes on the other end. “May I ask who’s calling?”

Well, he can manage phones better than most purebloods. Lily must have taught him. The thought burns worse than the gin. “It’s private.”

“Well, I’m her husband, so,” and then James Potter lets out a little laugh as if the end of the sentence is so obvious that it needn’t be said at all.

Severus grits his teeth and considers the satisfaction of slamming the receiver down and abandoning the project entirely. “Tell her,” Severus says slowly. Maybe he won’t have to talk to her at all. That could be a good thing, if he let it. “Tell her it’ll be tonight. Nine thirty.”

“What?” And that response isn’t joking or polite at all--it’s sharp and ready for a fight. More familiar, that--more like the James Potter that Severus remembers. “Is that a threat?”

Severus opens his mouth to reply but there’s the beginning of a scuffle on the other end, a fussy baby sound, a hissed  _ give it here _ , a sound of protest, and then:

“This is Lily Potter.” The voice is sharp, crisp as an operator’s.

“Tonight,” he repeats, growing impatient. “Nine thirty. Do you have that or will I repeat myself a third time?”

There’s an intake of breath--and then peals of laughter.

“Bloody  _ hell _ , do you have to sound like such an absolute ghoul?” she gasps, through her laughter. There’s a bit of cruelty in it, this laughter. It’s not the warm, ringing thing he remembers from their youth. Maybe that’s the telephone line. Likely it isn’t.

Severus wonders if it is possible to grind your own teeth flat. “You told me to call.”

“I didn’t tell you to make it sound like--like a portent of oncoming doom.” She sniffles once and heaves a great breath, her laughter finally gone. “Fine, yes, you did exactly as I asked. Nine thirty. I’ll be watching. Call when you get back.”

“It may be late.”

“I told you. Two in the afternoon, two in the morning, it doesn’t matter.” This comes along as chiding, not a kindness. There’s a gap, then, as if she’s expecting Severus to volley something back in a breath. “Ring me when you’re finished, let me know how it goes. And--” Then she sighs, as if she’s thought of saying something else and cut it off. Instead she says, “Be careful.”

It falls out of her mouth like something she’s said to everyone she’s met for the past three years.  _ Be careful. _ As if there’s any chance it might matter to her what happened to him on this little errand.

He has exactly enough phone etiquette to know precisely how rude it is for him to hang up the receiver without anything else, which is exactly why he does it. 

By the time he gets to Knockturn Alley, any of the looseness around his neck from the gin is gone. It’s better that way. Makes it easier to be careful.  But the meet is quick, efficient, free of danger. The salesman was easygoing, lackadaisical about the sale; he’s gotten comfortable with Severus as a regular customer, since this is the fourth purchase since the start of the year and Severus has embroidered the haemophiliac child story a little more. Severus stations himself in front of the bookshop again, looking for the same yellow scarf, watching the skin of Esur Abboud drag itself around the window. 

He wonders what Lily can see, from James Potter’s clever little map; if she is watching his foot tap or if the bit of parchment is not so sensitive. He almost misses the scarf in his absorption.

Almost. He comes away with a wrapped vial of potion and ten galleons lighter. That is how it goes these days, if you went to the same dealer for the same increasingly-rare thing and looked desperate enough. If you trusted a potions master you stayed their customer; if you stayed the customer for something rare enough, the price went up. It’s what Severus would do, were their roles reversed, and it’s Potter gold so he doesn’t begrudge it. When he gets the vial home, it tests the same as the other three samples. The same batch. The same dealer. It’s barely taken an hour to accomplish.

_ Be careful _ . Honestly. As if he didn’t know precisely what he was doing.

This time the gin is celebratory, though it really shouldn’t be. And then another, for a dose of bravery before he dials. This time, Lily picks up.

“Potter residence,” she sings.

“What’s the name?”

“And a good evening to you too,” she says. There’s warmth in it that only a healthy pour of gin allows him to appreciate, even as it disappears into a businesslike efficiency. Not all of their fight has been swept out of her mind, then. But some of it has. “How did it go?”

“As well as the others. Easier, even. What’s the of the dealer?”

She makes an amused sound that goes to a crackling hiss over the phone line. “We’re going to hand the name of your potions dealer over to some of our Auror lot and see what they can dig up.”

“And not to me?”

“And not to you, not until you need to know it,” she affirms. She’s almost jocular, so much so it makes him wonder if it’s an act put on for the benefit of James Potter--or worse, himself. “You’re awfully close to them, and it might come up nothing. It’s safer like this.”

“Would I know the name?”

“Well, I don’t know, Severus, can you can you list off all of your associates for the last six years for me?” It’s done lightly enough, but there’s a waspish note to her words now, a warning.

That’s what makes him try to retort, to push her. “In alphabetical? Or in the order of where I think they are in the Dark Lord’s favor?”

Sharp as a knife, she demands, “Is that your idea of a joke?”

It would have been if she had laughed at it. She used to laugh at that kind of joke, the too-dark, unkind sort of ribbing. Not anymore, not even when she’s being kind and deserves an ounce of honesty more than jokes. He lets the silence stretch a moment, pondering the question, and the one he had posed before it. “Both lists get a bit fuzzy right around Goyle,” he admits. “I might know the name even though I don’t know the face. They could be transfigured, or polyjuiced. But that would be more valuable if I did know them, not less.”

She makes a low, throaty almost-laugh, and it doesn’t even seem pointed at him, exactly, which softens the next. “I mean it, Severus. We’ve passed on the information and now we just have to wait. Both of us do. You can’t go chasing after your--your  _ associates. _ Especially if you do know them. It’ll blow your cover.”

Severus doesn’t like feeling as though he’s being humored. “And what should I be accomplishing in the meantime?”

“Whatever you please.”

“You can’t be serious. I’m a spy, I could be doing more.”

“You want to fling yourself in the way of danger?”

“What I want is for this war to be over so I can get on with the rest of my life.”

“Relax. This is  _ good  _ news. Dumbledore stopped by tonight, he’s delighted about how fast we’re moving and he offered up some ideas on how to move next. But we’ll have to wait til we have a bit more information.”

“Waiting,” he grumbles. “Just waiting.”

“If you stumble across anything that sounds important, pass it along, but yes, that’s the size of it. I’m no happier to be waiting than you are, Severus, it’s not as if I get a very active social life these days. Working with you is nearly the only time I get out of the house.”

Severus doesn’t have anything to say to that. He wants to apologize, but the question  _ what for _ has too many answers that would shatter this delicate peace. And the gin--drunk too quick--is making his head a bit loose on his neck again. 

Which is why he lets himself sit there and listen to her breathe. He only means to do it for a moment, a half a breath. But it’s what he’s paying for, with all this work. It’s the carrot at the end of the stick Dumbledore is dangling before him. He might as well get to enjoy at least a bit of it, even over a staticky, flat phone line that steals all but the barest life from it.

“Severus?” she says slowly. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” he says.

Another breath. The baby croaks a shapeless vowel and she makes a sound, a  _ shh shh shh  _ through her teeth that whispers through the telephone line so quietly it’s nearly static. Another breath. Then,  “Are you all right?”

What a stupid question. As if that mattered. He lets out a breath that isn’t quite a sigh. “Owl me when you have something, then.” He drops the receiver back onto the hook but it doesn’t quite sit right. He has to fumble with it for a moment, which Lily absolutely must hear.

If there’s a reason for it, that’s why he ends up Flooing Avery: the fact that he fumbled the phone like some knock-kneed teenager. Or perhaps it’s that he’s done as she asked, she’s been kind enough to him, kinder than he deserves if she knew what kind of danger he’s put her in, and he’s--what--let himself give into the weakness of desiring her?

No, it’s worse than that. Much worse.  _ Desiring her _ is easy; plenty of other men had done it. Even Avery could do so without batting an eyelash or endangering his inheritance. No, what he had done was much worse.

It’s only the gin that lets him admit the nature of it to himself, and that’s why he can’t stand to be alone in the room with it any longer.  _ Some _ gin is not enough. It must be blotted out entirely. 

Before he can think more, he’s grabbed a handful of powder and thrust his face into the green fire, and Avery is surprised but interested--it’s not every day Severus Snape comes through offering a round, after all--there is enough Potter gold to go around and Severus wants to spend more of it and eliminate the evening, the day, the year, hell, half his entire life could go and he wouldn’t miss it. It’s better than the alternative: to live on a traitor, a spy, a life full of secrets and dog-sick in love with another man’s wife. 


	7. February 6, 1981: Botulinim toxin

The pub barely has a name, but it's full and warm and only a little bit filthy in all the right ways, which is why Peter picks it. It's a mixed-use muggle-wizard place, with a little back room through notice-me-not doors with a fireplace on the Floo where the people who don't know better than to come out their robes can sit and not be bothered by the riffraff.

Sirius won't want to sit back there, Peter knows, so when he bellies up to the bar it's on the muggle side. He's in an old jacket of his father's with the collar turned up and jeans worn through at the knee and the only thing that makes him stand out is the fact that he has more hair than half the patrons on this side of things-most of the other patrons are old enough to remember the war. He holds up a finger and the girl pours the lager and it's almost all right, blending in like this. It feels safe. It feels easy, like a place he could disappear into the walls and never be missed at all. Peter had never managed to figure out if the people who worked there were wizards or squibs or exceptionally unobservant muggles, but frankly, it didn't matter. A pint was sometimes fifty pence if the nice girl was behind the bar, and she is tonight, and that is enough.

Sirius is late, of course. Sirius is always late. Peter's almost half-done with the pint when he arrives, and chokes and spills more of it when Sirius claps him across the shoulder.

"Pete," Sirius says gamely, straddling the barstool. He looks at the barmaid and lifts a finger with a smile. The beer he receives-faster that Peter ever would-is full to overflowing. "Heard you went by to the happy couple lately. How are they holding up in quarantine?"

"Fine," Peter lies. "Asked about you."

"Did they," Sirius says. "About what?"

"What you were up to," Peter continues. The more he lies, the easier it becomes, he's noticed. "With Benjy and all."

Sirius makes a face. "Benjy fucked up."

"He's  _dead_ , Sirius," Peter admonishes.

"And what about it? I'm not supposed to speak ill of the dead? He fucked up." Sirius takes a long sip of his lager and puts it down on the bar with such force that it foams, a little. He's properly angry about this. "Not my fault."

Peter tries to backpedal. "No one's saying it's your fault."

"Then why does everyone want to talk to me about it?" Sirius demands, rounding on him. "Tell me that you didn't bring me out here just to lecture me about  _Benjy._ "

Sirius has always been volatile, but the fuse is even shorter these days. Peter hadn't seen that coming. "All right, all right, sorry. We can talk about-I don't know." Peter fumbles, takes a sip of beer. There's something bland and Muggle and full of guitar thrumming out of the tinny little radio in the corner. Sirius probably knows the name, Peter doesn't. There has to be something, but all Peter can come up with is, "Harpies look good this year."

It's a bad attempt, and he knows it. Sirius snorts derisively and takes another long pull from his glass, then retrieves a packet of cigarettes from his inner pocket and lights one-the muggle way, with a fat little metal lighter. He tucks the lit thing between his lips and then catches Peter watching. "What, you want one?"

Peter looks at the packet and then nods. Peter's father had hand-rolled Peter's first cigarette. It might help calm Peter down. And there's a plan coming together somewhere inside Peter's skull, and this offer gives him time to think, a distraction, a prop. Sirius thumbs forth another cigarette and Peter cups a hand around the end as he lights it. The first drag burns and Peter struggles not to cough, but the second one goes straight to his head and loosens the band of nerves that had been slowly constricting.

"Thanks," he says, and the plan coalesces like a cloud of smoke in his mouth.

Sirius had been an active child; never went in for sport, exactly, but he was always pacing, moving, gesturing, writing notes. Impossible to keep still. As a man-no, as a combatant in a secret war-he is a bundle of frayed and sparking wire, leg jiggling against the barstool, finger tapping on the wood of the bar, picking at a ragged fingernail, pushing his shaggy hair out of his face.

He's not James. James could sit back and watch a summer day pass by in utter silence and feel fine about it; it's what Peter had liked about the boy when they'd first met, that he was so undemanding. It made their most recent meeting hard, harder than it had to be.

Sirius wasn't like that. Sirius needed to be moving, talking, working, doing  _something._

So Peter lets the silence stretch. Sirius will hear it stretch, too, and hear it, and itch with the need to fill it. Peter doesn't need to find a damn thing. Sirius will hand him the opening Peter needs because Sirius can't stand to do anything else.

The first minute ticks by and Sirius has already gone through more than half his cigarette. The barmaid drops an ashtray with an admonishment about ashing on the bar; Sirius just grunts at her and Peter just shrugs apologetically as he reaches forward to tap the ash in. It's the polite thing to do.

That's what everyone has always said about Peter, he remembers.  _Polite._ Never  _hilarious_  or  _creative_  or  _smart_  but polite, nice, quiet. He had hated it, had followed James and Sirius and even Remus, boys who gathered all the light in the room to themselves the moment they walked in. Peter had hoped to share some of that brilliance, to stand at least near the glow. But the light had never quite struck him the right way, and James and Sirius had never made quite enough to share.

But in his bravest moments, Peter feels sure there will be light enough for him soon. And he is feeling brave tonight.

Two minutes of silence between them, then three. Sirius lights another cigarette on the end of the previous. When he had picked up smoking, Sirius had loved making creatures of the smoke, blowing rings without the assistance of magic. Now he just burns through the paper and stains his fingertips. It's almost disgusting with how Muggle he is about it. He looks like a housewife on a porch, puffing away and squinting into the middle distance like he can see something there.

He stubs out the second cigarette at the filter, blows the smoke through his nose, and then tilts his head toward Peter as if he's just remembered he isn't alone. All affect, Peter would bet his life on it. "You're quiet."

"Not much to say, is there. You don't want to talk about it, I'm not talking about it. I just wanted to get a pint. We're getting a pint." Peter inspects the wisp of smoke curling up from his fingertips. "Better than drinking alone."

"Maybe," Sirius says.

"At least you return my owls," Peter says, a little bitterly.

Sirius angles a sharp glance at Peter. "Marlene?"

"You didn't hear? She's done with me."

"Shame," he says. "She was nice. You should have a nice girl."

Peter hears  _nice_  and knows Sirius means  _boring._  But Marlene  _was_  boring, and soon she'll be boring and dead. "It's fine."

Peter's increasingly sure that he's right, though-he doesn't have to keep this going. Now that Sirius has opened up his mouth it's as if he can't shut it. Barely a breath passes and Sirius starts up again. "So James is worried about me when he's the one under house arrest?"

"You know how James is."

"Well, James is no fun now he's gone and had a baby," Sirius says. "You remember how he  _used_  to be."

"Til Lily Evans got hold of him."

"It wasn't just her."

"It wasn't  _not_  her."

Sirius bobbles his head back and forth, conceding the point, and then says, "And now he's got that great big target on his back and he's stuck with her. Can't tell if he's loving it or hating it."

"From what I saw, it's a bit of both."

Sirius makes a dissatisfied sound through his nose. "I haven't seen him since before the holidays. Dumbledore has me running ragged after loose ends all the time and won't let anyone in except on  _business_."

Won't let  _Sirius_  in, Peter amends mentally, which is a prybar to loosen Sirius from Dumbledore, maybe. The wards didn't exactly lock him out. But Sirius did always want to be invited, welcomed with open arms, and they couldn't do that. Or perhaps Peter had been pushy enough, needy enough, gotten Dumbledore at the right time of day to say  _yes, visit your friend whenever you please_ -regardless, it's not the prize Peter's looking for, not today. "I'm surprised he hasn't asked to see you more. I'm sure Dumbledore would be a little less strict if James asked."

It tiptoes up to the edge of a lie-James hadn't asked to see Peter even once-but it's not a lie Sirius would ever let himself investigate. Too proud.

Sirius confirms it by taking another swig from his beer and then asking, "Have you talked to Remus lately?"

He hasn't. It's on the list, though, part of the slowly-evolving plan Peter has. Something neutral, then. "Thought he was out in the woods."

"He is," Sirius affirms, but something relaxes out of his shoulders. "Not even allowed to send owls to him."

He'd been worried, Peter realizes suddenly. Not about Remus, but that Peter had been seeing and talking to Remus when Sirius hadn't been allowed to, just like James. That Dumbledore had shut Sirius away from everyone. It's so brainless and selfish that Peter understands it immediately-it would be exactly like Sirius to see a measure undertaken for safety and take it as a personal slight.

"I'm sure he's fine," Peter says, almost a question-hoping Sirius will elaborate.

"He's not," Sirius says darkly. "Trust me. Last time he came back he barely said six words to me."

"He seemed-" Peter starts. He hadn't really been paying attention to Remus last time he'd been back, come to think of it. He'd looked dirty and poor and scarred up, maybe more than normal, maybe more tired than normal, but he'd looked worse. Peter had been too bound up in his own terror at the time. "I don't know. No worse than usual?"

"He's worse than usual," Sirius says.

"Worse how?"

It's the wrong question, and it's plain on Sirius' face, the way he looks sidelong at Peter as if he were a pet who had just pissed on the rug. "Worse."

"Sorry," Peter says quickly. "I just haven't seen him and I was wondering. It's been three full moons-"

"Four," Sirius corrects. "It's been four full moons, and the worst bit is, Remus said something last time we talked-"

Sirius is working himself up, Peter can see it. His thumb is flicking at the lighter just to throw sparks. "What did he say?"

"Said it was actually  _better_ ," Sirius spits. "Out there, transforming in the woods with a  _pack_."

"He wouldn't," Peter says. "He always hated the ferals."

"Well the times they are a-changing, Peter," Sirius interrupts bitterly. "He said it made  _sense_."

Peter can hear the exchange now: Remus saying something innocuous, offering some piece of vulnerability, trying to take some kind of solace in his friend. Maybe  _it makes sense to the wolf_  or  _it's easier to recover as a group_  or even just  _they know what to do more than anyone who isn't a werewolf can_  and Sirius would take that as a rejection and fly completely over the handlebars and shouting. Sirius always liked shouting and James let it wash over him and stayed sensible and present and until it was over and Remus would shut down and go quiet and Peter would hurry in to patch things up as best he could and they would roll along like that, a mess but a mess that stayed afloat.

Together is how they stayed afloat. Rookwood had explained it and now Peter could see it.

If it were James he'd say  _maybe that's the only thing that makes it work, the only way he can get by, spying the way he is._  But Sirius won't hear it. "That's awful," Peter says quietly.

"Yeah," Sirius says, and he takes another drink. He's near the bottom, now, and gestures to the bartender, who brings over another beer.

"I was thinking," Peter says after the bartender leaves. "About something you said. That James could have joined up, saved himself, saved Lily and Harry too." He swallows. "Do you really think he could have?"

Some of the air seems to go out of Sirius. "Look, mate, you don't know what it's like in among those people."

"I know," Peter agrees. "But you do."

"Wish someone would tell Dumbledore that."

Might as well worry at that fault, while he has the chance. "He should be listening to you."

But it doesn't land because Sirius has sighted something over Peter's shoulder, toward the back room where the other wizards drink. Someone's just come through the door to the Muggle side. Peter follows his gaze and-

_Shit._

"Excellent," Sirius mutters, and his mouth goes into a thin, feral smile.

Which is how Peter knows he is not getting out of the bar without a fight.


	8. February 6, 1981: Alcohol

Severus is dizzy with drink by the time he and Avery reach the third bar. Potter gold keeps falling out of his pockets and into Avery’s hands and turning into more drinks that Avery pushes back into Severus’ hands like some clumsy transfiguration and that, all of that, is just fine with Severus. Avery does all the talking anyway, and after the first bar there is a second, and then a third, and Severus doesn’t have to speak at all, just drink and nod and occasionally interject. Severus holds his liquor well, better than  _ Lily _ would--no, that’s a thought that needs to get strangled--fine, better than  _ James Potter _ would, which is a thing he actually has no basis to think but he feels very comfortable, just now, thinking it.

But this latest pub is stuffy and full of wizards more than fifty years their senior and Avery is restless and his eyes are bloodshot and he’s still  _ talking, _ yammering on like a zealot. Come to think of it, Avery might be on something else beyond the drink, which might be part of why he said yes to Severus so quickly. Severus knows about Avery’s  _ tendencies _ , his love to excess of an assortment of substances that both Muggle authorities and Wizarding ones would frown upon. Severus had, himself, concocted a few of them in exchange for galleons during their later schooldays before backing off at the advice of Mulciber--Mulciber, who is  _ also _ a person he would rather not think about just now for a variety of reasons. Mostly the same reasons he would rather not think of Lily, but not just those reasons--he had  _ gotten _ things from Mulciber, given and--no, that’s too close to it as well. 

The image of Mulciber the last time he’d seen him comes in against his will regardless, looking tall and handsome and running his thumb along the ridge of his wand like it was a his lover’s lips or--

Like it was absolutely nothing at all. Severus resolves to actually start  _ listening _ to Avery instead of just nodding along.

“--and once the smoke cleared they were dead,” Avery says, gesturing with a grimace. “Like--like  _ doxies _ , with their legs straight up in the air.”

“Straight up?” Severus says, in an attempt to re-engage.

“Thass what he said,” Avery says with a sloppy shrug. “And Edwin, this American bloke, he was  _ there, _ in the jungle, watching it all happen, with the firebombing and the chemical weapons and all of it. Collecting some kind of rare root that only grows in that area, if you can believe it. That’s why he showed me the pictures, that’s why he’s so outspoken even though the MACUSA wants him shut up and the papers over there won’t print a word he says.” Avery drinks again. “Did you know, even the American wizards, the ones who got caught up in the Muggle draft, some of them died too? In some fucking Vietnamese jungle on some Muggle government’s whim.”

Politics again. Severus needs another drink. He lifts a finger and the bartender, a woman with goblin blood so pronounced that she would need a stepstool to reach the taps, makes an efficient gesture. A new pint starts filling itself and she goes on polishing glasses. “Let them kill each other. Seems like there’s no point in--that part. For us.”

“Th _ problem _ is,” Avery is saying, one leg vibrating where he’s hooked a foot around Snape’s barstool, “Th _ problem _ is, there’s just more of them, right? Just  _ more. _ So you’d have to build up fortresses, right, and not just physical ones--you’d have to keep out the gas bombs too, like in their World War. I’ve told him this, I’ve said,  _ Hey, you know, we need to build, and I’ve got these designs, _ he knows I’ve got bigger vision because I’ve got designs _ \-- _ ”

“You’d  _ never _ ,” Severus slurs.

“What, I’d never what?”

Severus lifts a hand in affectation. “ _ Hey? You know?” _   The hand drops. “With  _ him _ ? You get down on your knees and you like it, with him.” A beer floats into it, a beer that Severus would have frankly forgotten if it hadn’t settled into his palm like a bird to a princess. He makes a pleased little noise in the back of his throat and drinks.

“Not with me,” Avery boasts. “Everything I do for him, he tells me how valuable it is.”

“Like what,” Severus drawls around the mouth of his pint. “What has he got you working on?”

Avery’s cheeks are already pink, but when he screws up his face he looks even more like a pig. “I don’t  _ work on _ , I’m  _ on call. _ I’m a fighter. He calls me up when there’s a spot of  _ fighting _ . Not like you, slogging along like it’s a job.”

Purebloods, Severus knows, are above anything nearly so undignified as a  _ job. _ Anyone in the sacred twenty-eight would be ashamed to have a child punching a clock like Tobias Snape had, and Avery was no exception. Severus drinks again and rolls his eyes; there is no response where he looks good.

Avery goes on, wanting to truly land the barb. “Cause of my dad, cause we’ve been loyal not like  _ you _ and your blood traitor mum _. _ ”

“Dead blood traitor mum,” Severus corrects, barely taking his lip off the glass to do so.

“But that’s just it,” Avery says explosively, rocking his chair back so forcefully it seems as though he might fall. “Folks like your mum, witches, they need--” he gestures widely, nearly upending his own pint. “They need to be  _ protected _ .”

The point has spun round again, but this time it sticks with Severus. He spends a moment retracing the mental math of years past. If he had been born a pureblood--even a pureblood with no wealth to speak of, like his Prince mother--how it could have eased the way for him. He could have been in a Slytherin dorm with his cousins, been raised in a wizarding town and never hidden who and what he was. His father--never more than a rough sketch of a tall, broad-shouldered wizard in fine robes--maybe he was foreign and took Eileen and his son on summers to Spain and France, maybe--

A traitorous thought, one he hasn’t considered in almost four years, winds its way into the old fantasy. A pureblood boy could kiss another pureblood boy and no one would bat an eyelash as long as they both married pureblood girls and produced strong heirs. But halfbloods were only good for a roll in a broom cupboard. Mulciber had said so himself.

And he never would have known Lily Evans at all.

“--And what have they got to show for their magic?” Avery’s still raging about the dangers of muggle men on wizarding women. “You can’t invent spells or potions like that. You can’t, can’t-- _ improve _ the wizarding world. You can barely take your wand out. Fuck, even telling your husband is a loophole in the Statute! And our witch, she’s got  _ nothing _ for it all when she does. All you’ve got is a Muggle husband and half-muggle children.”

Severus gulps the last of his beer--gone so fast,  how  _ had _ he done it--and then puts the glass down on the bar roughly. It rings on the bar like a bell. “This  _ place _ is half-muggle,” Severus mutters.

The effect of that sentiment on Avery is rather out of scale with what Severus had anticipated. He had hoped for more innocuous grousing about  _ how-dare-they-make-us-live-in-secret-when-we-should-rule _ , the usual Death Eater line when the Statute comes up. But Avery looks up, and at the door, and his leg--which has been the entire time jiggling against Severus’ stool, so incessantly Severus had been able to ignore it--has suddenly gone still.

“Yes,” Avery says slowly, looking around the room with slow-growing disgust focused on the door to the rest of the pub. “Th _ place _ is half Muggle.” And when Avery says it like that, he doesn’t make it sound like a fact or an accusation. 

He makes it sound like a  _ fixable problem _ . 

Any Muggle would see a door labelled  _ Private Club _ from the other side. But from the Wizarding side, it’s more of a barrier that hazes out the Muggle half, turning everyone and everything to smudges of dark color. Avery begins to wobble toward it, then shakes his head, mutters something, rubs at his nose. Severus piles as many sickles on the bar as he can and when he looks back to Avery, he’s moving again, toward the barrier--through it. 

That smudged half of the room comes into sharp focus as Severus follows Avery through the barrier, mind racing. The room is close to full. It’s a Friday, and hands have been greased by paychecks. It’s an older clientele, Muggles all, lost in their pints and their conversations and the little tinny radio spitting muggle music over the scarred wooden bar that Avery is glaring at.

“Excellent,” says a familiar voice from the bar, and the scrape of a barstool.

Severus’ wand is in his hand before he can even think about how incredibly illegal it is to brandish a wand before a group of Muggles. Avery finds his voice fast enough, though. “Sirius Black. Didn’t know this place had gone so  _ completely _ to shit.”

Black eases off his stool in his too-tight jeans and his leather jacket and a cigarette dangling from a finger. He takes a drag as he approaches, close, close,  _ very close _ , and when he speaks it’s all harsh, hot smoke and almost a murmur: “You two Death Eaters are so drunk, I bet I could knock you over without my wand.”

“Try it,” Severus says through his teeth, fingers white on his wand. 

This is stupid,  _ incredibly _ stupid, to be waving a wand around in the Muggle half of a half-Muggle bar, to be picking a fight with a person they both know for a fact to be a member of the Order, to be doing so  _ here, _ in plain view of a dozen staring Muggles, fighting this schoolyard fight, but at this exact moment he can’t quite bring that level of perspective to bear.

The bartender can see how stupid it is too. “Oi,” the bartender says, eyeing Severus’ wand like she knows what it is. “You lot, take it outside if you have business.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Black says, smiling over his shoulder. “Peter, do we have business?”

The mousy, nervous boy looks between Black and Avery and Severus and back to Black and then, making some kind of internal calculation, he pulls a few notes from his billfold and slaps them on the bar. Then he stands, both hands thrust in his pocket, and jerks his neck to the door.

“Ah,” Black says, sounding even more pleased. “Well then. Two on two is fair, isn’t it?”

The old alliances still hold, then. Severus chances a look to Avery.

“Hardly fair,” Avery says archly, “considering you’re blood traitor trash.”

Black doesn’t even blink. “I’ll see you outside, boys.” His grin is still the vicious, affected thing it’s been since he laid eyes on the pair of them. “Unless you’re cowards.”

The wand in Severus’ hand moves before he even knows he’s made a choice. The bloody slash arcs across Black's chest, ripping open the shirt and skin, but no more.

In an instant, Black’s wand is in his hand and the unchanging smile sharpened with pain before blooming once more with genuine joy. His wand has barely cleared his pocket when he sends whizzing, sparking light back at Severus twice as fast--Severus doesn’t even have an instant to identify the spell before parrying with an empty stool and sending another flying at Black, who dodges rather than stopping the thing. Pettigrew’s frozen at the doorframe, dumb as a cow with his wand in his hand but not  _ doing _ anything with it, but Avery’s got his out now and whatever he’s casting is hot, horribly hot--

_ Fiendfyre _ , Severus realizes. Pettigrew realized first and bolted out the door, already gone. The barmaid, who has fetched the half-goblin from the back room, is screaming. The half-goblin barmaid shrieks  _ OUT!  _ with a gesture that pulls her hands apart and then claps them back together--

It’s a spell, a goblin wandless thing with no name, one that tumbles the three lot of them into the street and breaks Avery’s concentration so badly that any hope of keeping the blaze under control is dashed. Pettigrew’s face swims in and out of focus, the door is swinging behind them, Avery is cackling like a Muggle’s idea of a witch, and the other customers, Muggle men and women, are running past all four of them as they flee the burning place and then a bloody fist flies at Severus’ face.

He barely has time to think  _ oh, fuck _ before it connects. Severus is holding his nose, stumbling backward, and there’s another attempted strike. It’s Black, his face mobile and fast with delight, but Severus manages to stagger out of the way. Black swings again, less wildly, but this one Severus manages to deflect with a bit of undirected force from his wand. Stumbling back for room, nearly tumbling over a fleeing Muggle, he lashes out undirected-- _ sectumsempra  _ again, easy as reflex. Black dodges narrowly and it catches a muggle in the back--she screams and falls--no time to concern himself with it, Severus is forced to deflect another attempt-- _ incarcerous _ , the binding curse--and Severus lets out a harsh, wild laugh.

“Something funny, Death Eater?” spits Black, spinning a long loop of flame from the burning building, his shirt hanging open and blood flowing freely from the wound Severus had landed.

In most other duels, Severus would keep his mouth shut. Mouthy duelists didn’t tend to duel for very long. But in most other duels Severus would be wearing a mask. “You’re trying to tie me up for the Aurors?” he taunts. As he speaks, he scans; Avery is staggering, trying to control his fire, but it’s spun out of control and Severus can see it. Muggles are fleeing into the street and up the sidewalks, there’s an alley Severus can escape into behind a lamppost and a postbox, but Pettigrew is nowhere--

Black does a complex wand motion too fast to track. Severus’ dueling skills suffer under drink, he knows it, because he can’t tell what Black has cast until the conjured icicle speeds past his face. Severus can’t move fast enough to sheild himself and one clips his shoulder, another shreds his cloak, a third--he feels more than hears himself shout, the pain is so bright--it sinks deep and hits bone somewhere high in his arm. The spell’s gone wide and that’s the only reason he’s even survived the first salvo. Severus stumbles back under the force of it, into the lamp-post, then behind the postbox, but the onslaught keeps going. There’s no opportunity to run into the alley with the icicles shattering against the sheild. Black is advancing and it’s all Severus can do to keep his wand arm up to protect himself.

Suddenly, there’s Pettigrew, white as a sheet--he must have crept up from the street, from behind Severus--he’s seizing Severus on both arms as if to drag him out into the open again. His mouth opens like he’s about to say something, shout over the sound of shattering ice but Severus doesn’t give him the chance.

Instead, Severus shoulders the shorter boy out from behind the postbox and drops the shield charm.

Black couldn’t have stopped it if he wanted to, and he has clearly wanted very badly to kill Severus. Whatever words Pettigrew was going to say turn into a high, agonized scream. One of the icicles sinks so deep in Pettigrew’s gut that Severus can see its end of it from where he’s still hiding. Black stops, and then says the boy’s name, but Pettigrew’s making some kind of awful high burbling sound, as if the scream had gone up and up and up and then disappeared somewhere inside him. Blood wells around the icicles and begins to flow. An artery has been nicked. At least one.

Severus stumbles back into the street, from behind the postbox--also perforated with ice--there’s another alley on the other side of the street and Severus limps toward it. Pettigrew’s scream got Avery’s attention, too. He’s wild, the ends of his hair crisped by fire, sprinting toward the alley. “Aurors,” he barks as he flies past, snatching up Severus’ arm. Severus matches his sprint as best he can, stumbling and half-dragged. Behind him, Black says  _ Peter _ again, louder, with urgency.

“Side-along me,” Severus pants into Avery’s ear.

Avery does, but not before Severus feels a deep satisfaction, watching Sirius Black fall to his knees before the boy he has skewered, his friend, Peter Pettigrew, who has collapsed to the ground. Then the alley disappears around them.


	9. February 7, 1981: Morphine

It’s many hours, some of them passed in sleep and others passed with a piercing hangover, before Severus can take a deep breath again. The icicle that had caught Severus in the arm went deep, but Avery’s house-elf has healed him and his compatriots before, and she does the same for Severus with kind efficiency natural to the species. Severus sleeps on a quilted chaise in an unused spare room and Avery’s parents don’t even know he’s there. 

Yaxley, the reliable Auror and friend to the Avery family that he is, owls in around four in the morning. The Muggle authorities and all the Muggles who had gone running out of the bar had turned this into a real fiasco even though none of them had died. The Muggle Severus had sliced up by accident had needed St Mungo’s since it was cursed wounds, though, and that would make things complicated. And then there’s the matter of the fact that neither of them were wearing masks during this sortie, and Sirius Black was all too happy to give up their names to the Aurors. Needless to say, Yaxley concluded in his note, they both need to lie low until it can get sorted. 

Avery can do that at his home estate; there are hiding places aplenty there and no Auror would really try overmuch to search the place deeply. This has happened before to Avery several times, and he offers Severus the same sanctuary. Severus turns him down with an implication that the Dark Lord has provided a safe house for him to continue his job--an excuse that Avery will never inspect. In reality, Severus has Cokeworth.

Even so, it’s dark and late in the next day by the time he opens the door to the house on Spinner’s End. The house elf had Apparated him to a busy rail station and Severus, cloak transfigured into a Muggle coat and hood pulled tight around his face, manages to take the rail home without too much trouble. It’s a Saturday night and he’s able to blend in well enough, even in robes beneath the transfigured coat. The transfiguration holds until he gets off the train, at which point he gives up and gives a shot at Disillusioning himself in an alley. It works well enough, and if a door on a dirty side street in filthy Cokeworth opens itself, well, no one is watching.

Severus is more tired than he realizes. He begins removing his jacket, wincing as his hurt shoulder rotates. But it’s still in his hands when he realizes that someone is sitting in one of the squashy armchairs in the living room, sipping tea.

“Dumbledore,” Severus says numbly.

“You’ve been busy, Severus,”  Dumbledore says across the top of his teacup. It fogs his glasses suddenly, obscuring his eyes, with the chill wind Severus’ entry let in.

“I can explain,” he says quickly, but Dumbledore raises his hand to silence him.

“Shut the door, Severus.”

Severus fumbles, shutting the door as fast as he can and locking it as if that could keep Dumbledore out after the fact. “It wasn’t my fault,” Severus attempts again when he turns back to him, his voice rising.

The fog is gone from his glasses, but his eyes are just as opaque as they were. “That is quite irrelevant.”

“It’s not like I asked Avery to burn that bar down!”

“Yet he did, and you were with him. You also used that clever curse of yours on Sirius Black, and very nearly killed Peter Pettigrew with another.”

Pettigrew isn’t dead. It’s not quite a relief. “Only nearly?” Severus sneers. “Shame.”

Dumbledore’s face goes terribly still. “So you do not deny it. You attempted to kill him exactly as Sirius told me.”

Something in Dumbledore’s face tells Severus that this is potentially an end to their alliance--that this is a breach, a terrible one. His head feels stuffed with cotton. “And you believe him?”

“He has given me no reason to doubt him,” Dumbledore says evenly, deadly still. "Unlike you."

Severus can feel his face flushing red with fury. “He was the one-- _ look _ \--” and Severus drops his coat to the floor and pulls open the throat of his robes, sending one button flying across the room, to display one angry weal of new skin on his upper arm. “He was the one who couldn’t stop conjuring ice when his supposed  _ friend _ got in the way.”

And that, strangely, gives Dumbledore a satisfying amount of pause. He puts down the teacup on a side table, at least, inspecting the bared skin from a distance until it meets his satisfaction. Severus thought he might at least rise to see Black’s handiwork, he had a faint fantasy of showing it to Dumbledore and railing against the whole parameters of their agreement, railing against Dumbledore’s continual allowances for Black. That hope dwindles quickly under Dumbledore’s gaze. The man might be listening, but he is far from convinced. “And how did you come to be at the same bar as Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew?” he asks softly, so kindly that there is infinite danger in it.

Severus pulls his robes closed. “It was an accident.”

Dumbledore looks over his spectacles.

“It was an  _ accident. _ I wasn’t trying to get Avery riled up, I wasn’t trying to find those two, I was trying to--”  _ spend time with a friend _ is hopelessly pathetic. “Get drunk. I was getting drunk on Potter gold.”

“And why was that?”

Severus scowls, tugging his shirt back over his shoulders. “You know very well why. You take great personal satisfaction knowing  _ why.” _

Dumbledore nods as though he's come to a decision. “Be all of that as it may, you are now known as a person using that cutting curse. It has been tied to several attacks on Aurors, among other Death Eater activities. This curse was virtually unknown before seventy-nine and only a very select group knows this curse of yours, as they--and you--cast it nonverbally. It ties you to those crimes.”

Severus curses and rubs his temple.

“You do not deny it?” He seems to have come to some kind of opaque internal decision.

Severus shakes his head slowly. “Your lot has contacts in the Auror department,” Severus mutters, defeated. “Have them make it disappear.”

“I wish it were that simple, Severus.” He comes to his feet, hands folded before him. “But the Aurors are out for blood for the man who they think has attacked their comrades, and Sirius Black is--very unfortuantely--not known for his discretion. It is entirely out of my control.”

Severus curses again, louder.

“You will need a disguise,” Dumbledore adds helpfully. “If you’d like to leave this cheerful home of yours before the end of the war.”

“I believe you expect me to leave this place on occasion,” Severus says acidly. “It will be impossible to hunt the person poisoning blood replenisher from here.”

“Indeed. I believe Lily will have news for you on this front shortly. Though you may want to tread carefully there.” Dumbledore smooths his hands over his robes. “Pettigrew will be recuperating with the Potters upon his release from St Mungos.”

“What,” Severus says stupidly.

“You may wish to discuss this matter with Lily Potter,” Dumbledore continues, as if Severus hasn’t spoken. “While she and her husband are aware of your change of heart, you may not wish others to know it.” Dumbledore opens his hands and his eye twinkles, as if to tempt him to a sweet. “Unless you have changed your mind on that account and grown to trust the Order?”

“You have a  _ spy, _ you told me so yourself,” Severus spits. His head hurts. “Pettigrew is a simpering idiot. Even Potter is too many.”

“The wife, the child, and the man you object to are all Potters, Severus,” Dumbledore says, resigned. “But I will respect your wishes all the same. You will have to come to an arrangement with Lily and James Potter to disguise the comings and goings to continue your work in addition to your own disguise.” He waves a hand vaguely, and the teacup he left on the side-table vanishes. “I leave the details to your ingenuity. You need not inform me of them.”

Severus can’t even muster the energy to curse Dumbledore as he walks past to leave.

\---

Even in the future, Peter can’t come up with words to describe the experience of the previous day. There’s a deep and profound nothingness overlaid with agony. Even the pain fades after a while. There are voices, certainly, but no words. The only thing he truly remembers, later, is that something revolting has been poured into his mouth more than once--Peter tries to splutter them out each time but he’s forced to drink them down. 

Then the pain  _ really _ starts.

It’s the kind of pain that prevents real sleep, the kind that ebbs and flows but never really leaves. There are still voices and he doesn’t care that he is weeping openly in front of them, wetting his pillow, wetting the bed. Exhaustion eventually takes him. Peter has never been so thankful that he doesn’t dream.   

The next time awareness returns, the pain is still there, but it’s more of a dull throbbing ache than active agony. He isn’t dead, then. For a while he was sure he was dead, or dying, or about to die. For a while he had wished to just get on with dying instead of sticking around in agony. But what’s another wish denied? Peter lives. He opens his eyes.

Peter has never been inside of St Mungos as a patient, but he knows what a mediwitch looks like and the one standing over his bed looks surprised to even see him with his eyes open.

“Goodness me,” she says. “You’re awake. That’s a full hour ahead of schedule, you must have quite the metabolism to have processed all the potion we put into you so quickly. How are you feeling?”

“Water,” croaks Peter. The word comes out sloppy, misaligned; something in his mouth is wrong.

Obligingly, she begins filling a glass. “Those Death Eaters did some awful things to you, dear. Don’t try to move.” She holds the glass to his lips. 

Peter swallows clumsily, but something feels wrong in his throat, then wet down his front.

“Oh, you’ve sprung a leak again--hold still.” She puts the glass aside in favor of a cloth, which she uses to dab away the water that has--somehow--gone down his face and into the sheet next to him. “You came in such a mess they honestly didn’t think you’d make it through the night, but look at you now! All cleaned up and asking for water.” It’s intended to sound like good news. It isn’t. With her wand, she performs some complex re-bandaging apparatus across his cheek and jaw and throat.

And that--he’s  _ sprung a leak _ . His mind is finally coming back up to speed. His  _ face _ has sprung a leak. And his throat. Yes, some of the pain had been on his face, but it had also been everywhere else. Peter tries to say another word but the new bandages are snug and difficult to work around. He tries again. “Sirius?”

“Was that your friend, the dark-haired lad who came in with you? Wouldn’t leave your side, that one. We had to give him the boot, unfortunately. The Aurors needed a word a few hours ago and he hasn’t been back yet.” She holds up a hand to forestall any further words. “Save your strength. Now that you’re awake the gentleman from the Ministry will want to know. He’s been very impatient to speak with you. And the doctor will want to see you again, as will the Aurors to take your statement. But the Ministry man is here so we’ll start with him, I think. He’s been quite patient and he insisted it was Ministry business of the highest degree  _ and _ security said his paperwork was in order, so, there’s nothing I can do about that.” She gives him a pitying look. “Hopefully he’ll only have a few questions and he’ll be done with you quickly.”

She bustles away before Peter can even think of anything else to say.

Instead of trying to speak again, Peter thinks. He hadn’t wanted to start the fight. That had been Sirius. And Avery, who was high or drunk or both and spoiling to do some destruction, he had wanted to fight too. Sirius had sniffed that out like a cat in heat. No wonder it had gone so far sideways so quickly with the two of them in the mix.

Snape was unexpected, though. He had barely seen the boy since their time together at school, and thought of him even less often. The intervening years hadn’t changed much. Still a Slytherin bootlicker and now, presumably, a Death Eater like Avery.

Like Peter, too, he reminds himself.

When the goblin bartender ejected them all, Peter only had time to dart out the door. He still took some force from the spell, though less than the others, and that meant he came to his senses the quickest. He went rat quick as he could and hid in a gutter for a moment, which let him stop panicking and allowed a thought come together in his mind: 

_ Sirius can’t be secret-keeper if he’s dead. _

Cowardly Peter. Pitiful Peter. Can’t hold his wand straight in a duel but the one who survived, always. That version of Peter could make it two-on-one, could make a good story for Snape and Avery to tell and for Peter to cry over to James and Lily. But how to make it happen?

It didn’t matter, in the end. Sirius started slinging those icicles, and Snape’s postbox wasn’t going to last long, Peter could see that even with the rat’s eyes. The opportunity was closing. He had to do something. On tiny rat legs, he went beneath the postbox and returned to human on the other side, seized Snape, intending to tell him how to beat Sirius, that they could work together as comrades in arms--

And before he could say a single word, Snape had shoved him into the path of Sirius’ attack.

Not exactly a Death Eater like Avery and Snape, then, Peter thought bitterly. There were downsides to being a spy. Now he had holes all over and no one to blame but himself. Peter lifts his hand to his face.  _ Leaking. _ And Sirius talking to the Ministry, and Peter about to be questioned, and no way to know what Sirius has said or what Peter should say or--

The Ministry man who walks through the door is wearing a sharp suit and polished dragonhide shoes and briefcase to match and, just now, hoping against hope, Peter could kiss him full on the mouth with relief that it’s Augustus Rookwood, his partner, his friend, his comrade.

“Augustus,” Peter tries to mumble with relief through his bandages.

Rookwood gives him a sharp look over his shoulder, to check for anyone listening, then shuts the door. “Save your strength, Peter. I can’t stay long, I had to suggest there might be some kind of Unspeakable business going on to get in here and I do have to accomplish a few other things to finish that cover.” That must have been a sacrifice, Peter can hear it in his tone, and the thought warms him-- _ Peter _ is worth a sacrifice to him. Rookwood then withdraws a vial from his robes. “But this is the most important thing. You will have gotten blood-replenisher, and we don’t want to risk you being poisoned. It will slow your healing, but…” Rookwood tilts his head to the side with an ironic gesture, letting Peter infer the grisly demise.

Peter struggles to sit up more with one arm too weak to push properly, but he manages it, taking the vial and drinking the contents down quickly and obediently. It’s bitter and metallic and hot and then suddenly cold, and Peter sucks air through this teeth, pressing his good hand to the leaky part of his face. He hopes enough potion has made it into him and not into the bandages to prevent poisoning. “We need to talk,” Peter tries to say, but it comes out worse--the potion’s numbed his tongue. The working hand gestures into the air. “Quill and parchment?” Peter mumbles thickly.

It only takes Rookwood a moment to take his meaning. “Brilliant. Yes, that’ll do. Here.”

In clumsy longhand, he scrawls  _ What do you need to know? _

“Well, I’ve mostly come to check in on you, Peter. You are a valuable member of our organization, after all.” Rookwood smiles that warm, fatherly smile. “I must say, when I told you to seize on every opportunity to sow doubt, this is not quite what I had in mind.”

Peter starts to smile back, but something pulls inside of his face--some piece of flesh knitting back together or coming apart. Best not to smile.  _ Sirius? _ he scribbles.

“Answering to the Aurors. They will want a statement from you as well, I imagine.” He looks over Peter, wrinkling his nose. “I didn’t think Avery had this sort of thing in him.”

Peter sits still for a moment, in thought. His arm is throbbing with the effort of pushing himself upright and writing, but this is important--the pain helps, the pain keeps him awake. Finally he writes out slowly, _Not Avery._ _Sirius._

Rookwood’s eyebrows shoot up. “Well then. Lying to the Aurors is a crime.”

But an idea is coming together now. Peter shakes his head, then writes,  _ Lie for him _ .

“To what advantage?”

_ Martyr. _ Peter shifts the quill, tries to roll his shoulder to loosen it, but something pulls there too.  _ Protect Sirius. Prove I can protect James. _

Rookwood reads the words, brow furrowed, and then taps his lip with a fingertip. Finally, he asks, “Do you think it will work?”

_Yes_ , Peter writes. His other hand is in a fist. The pain is real but so is his certainty. _Sow doubt._

And Rookwood takes the paper from between Peter's hands and incinerates it, but his smile is brilliant.

**Author's Note:**

> you can also find me on my brand new [twitter](https://twitter.com/built_shadows) & my old and full of shitposts [tumblr!](https://we-built-the-shadows-here.tumblr.com/)


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